Material designers Henna Burney and Kalijn Sibbel of Atelier Luma have used ancient salt marshes in southern France to create thousands of glass-like panels and installed them as cladding inside Frank Gehry's Arles tower.
Over 4,000 of the panels, which are all made from salt crystals, line the lift lobbies on nine floors of the tower, designed by Gehry for the Luma Arles arts centre.
The panels were created by Sibbel and Burney, who are designers at the art centre's design lab Atelier Luma, as part of a four-year-long project in the Camargue salt flats.
The project was carried out to explore the natural crystallisation of salt that occurs there, and develop new applications for the material in the fields of design and architecture.
Salt panels inside the Luma Arles tower The salt cladding is being exhibited today by Burney as part of her guest editorship for Dezeen 15 ? a digital festival celebrating Dezeen's 15th birthday.
Later today, Burney will also speak to Dezeen's editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs in a live interview and explain the studio's manifesto for the use of salt as "a material of the future".
"The wall of salt is a way to prove that it is possible to design with salt and it is possible to take it from its usual applications," Burney told Dezeen.
"It is also a way to prove that materials can also be grown and that maybe not every aspect of its production needs to be fully controlled."
The panels were made by Kalijn Sibbel and Henna B...