Harvard Design School student Dan Adams (second from left in photo) caught the spirit of the place in his revelatory interpretation of the salt piles across the street. Eastern Salt President Shelagh Mahoney (left) suggested the "Go Sox" message pictured above. This week, the message will be "Vote" (that's debatable, of course), and each week thereafter, the messages will be up to Adams and Rudolph.
This is going on right across the street from us -- a magical transformation of those glorious rising and falling salt piles we've blogged here, here, here and here, and we totally love the idea. It came out of a Harvard Design School course, "Listening to the City," taught by Professor Margaret Crawford, as reported in our local rag, the Chelsea Record:
[The course] focuses on urban design -- how architects and planners can work with, instead of replacing, a city's existing infrastructure, industry and green space. Chelsea was the classroom for this course.
Students were asked to come up with ideas in which they could engage Chelsea's social and economic dynamics [no one asked us, but had they, we would have given them a thumbs up] . . . Adams became fascinated with developing a way to utilize the salt pile and make it appreciated as . . . a testament to the unique qualities of the city. While many [do-gooders who never asked us abuttters] protest the existence of the salt pile and point to the [bogus] health concerns it raises, Adams saw the salt pile as a living monument that could be appreciated for what it was.
Over the next year, he and Chelsea resident Dave Rudolph, a freelance lighting technician, will periodically project simple messages on the salt pile by using high-powered stage lighting and patterned metal filters. The project is being sponsored initially by Eastern Salt, and the pair have a pending grant request before the Chelsea Cultural Council for additional funding.
One of our own homages to the salt piles, this glorious image in the early morning light, part of a set of Chelsea greeting cards we produced a coupla years ago. We LOVE the piles and love it that Harvard Design School Student Dan Adams does too.
"The salt pile is talking to them," [Adams] said. "Our hope is that the community will start communicating back." Salt of the earth, Dan and Dave. So glad to have you in the neighborhood.
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