Wrestle with the earth forever
Botanists, satellites, and politicians
Dig, dry, destroy
The butterfly effect
Uncanny playspace
Turbine testing and wind on demand
Fluid dynamic domestication
So, is it beautiful?
Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring...
Moving the [atmospheric] river
Exhibition
Curatorial Conversation
Gallery
About
By Gabe Saltzman
What is Owens Lake? Give me some quick facts.
Owens Lake is a now-dry lakebed, around 3 hours drive north of Los Angeles, at the foot of the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains. For over 800,000 years it was a shallow and very wide lake until 1913 when William Mulholland and what became the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built a dam just upstream and diverted the incoming river water into the Los Angeles Aqueduct to supply the city. By 1925, Owens Lake, about the size of the San Fernando Valley, or two Manhattan Islands, was completely dry.
Previously underwater, the fine silt surface sands contain harmful natural minerals like cadmium and arsenic. As mountain winds scoured the surface up into the air, Owens Lake became the largest source of fine particulate dust pollution in the United States. After nearly a century of unchecked airborne pollution blowing across the Southwest, the LADWP was sued into accepting responsibility and began mitigation work to reduce dust emissions in 2000.
In 2024, the LADWP mitigation achieved 99.4% reduction of dust emissions. At a taxpayer cost of $2.5 billion in 24 years. The mitigation can never stop or the dust emissions will return. LADWP plans to be operating at Owens Lake forever.
Why did the project turn out like this?
The Owens Lake Studio is an exercise in wrangling and representing a large story in order to present a tension between the real and what we believe could be real. In simpler words: it is architectural work.
Chris and I take the position that the architectural perspective asserts no preference between what is happening and what could be happening. Instead, the traditional tasks of the architect -- the acts of observation, of imagination, of design, and of representation -- all require multidirectional fluidity between the two. Between the possible and the real, the real and the possible.
The Owens Lake Studio uses architectural work to exhibit the story of Owens Lake. More potent than merely the real story. A story where you can simultaneously imagine something different.