- Ruins of the Salton sea, CA
THE INTENTIONAL MIRACLE AT THE SALTON SEA, CALIFORNIA.
The Salton Sea offers the good life in the sun. It’s the place for you to take charge of your future, you can come as you are — no reservations required.’ (Real Estate Advertisement, 1958) The Salton Sea is the result of a massive engineering mishap in which the Colorado River was accidently diverted into California’s Imperial Valley during the early-1900s. Before the flow could be halted over 350 sq. Miles of desert had been flooded. This ‘accidental sea’ soon became a tourist attraction, however, and an opportunity for rampant architectural speculation. Resorts, marinas and suburbs grew up almost overnight and by its height in the 1950s members of the cultural elite – from Jack and Jackie Kennedy to Frank Sinatra and his booze-addled Rat Pack – visited to drink martinis and race speedboats. Unfortunately the ‘California Riviera’ was fed with chemically enriched agricultural run-off and the promise of modern architectural haven — ‘a Palm Springs with water’ — faded with the toxic reality of 140 deg. Summers and apocalyptic wildlife die-offs. The Intentional miracle is created in different iteration, each apan a 10 year life time, transfer its content with reduction of scale and distillation of objects, resulting in a more condensed, concessis salton sea for the remaining inhabitant, and their salvage of the lost American dream.
The Dream Served Through Memory. Salton Sea. CA. Kwok Yu Hin. Third Year. Inter 1.