Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty Case Study

An important factor of post-industrial landscapes is preservation of the industrial past. There are two different ways to treat historic architecture and landscapes: one is to create a static monument to the past and the other is to focus on dynamic processes and focus on the time passing.
In the design of post-industrial sites, the first way is expressed by a return to the preindustrial era when industry did not intervene with nature like the 1962 design proposal of a Victorian-style landscape urban park for the Seattle Gas Works, or “off-limit” monuments of the industrial structures like Haag’s way to preserve the Gas Works structures.
A well-known project embodying time accumulation is Robert Smithson’s earthwork, Spiral Jetty. In April 1970, Smithson built the Spiral Jetty, a coil 1500 feet long and approximately 15 feet wide, in the Great Salt Lake. The Spiral Jetty was built with black rocks. They were covered with white salt crystals over time, and formed a strong contrast to the red lake water colored by algae.

People had tried to get oil out of this natural tar pool for over forty years. A series of heavy black oil seeps looked like asphalt. The site had irregular beds of limestone, and the massive deposits of black basalt gave the site a shattered appearance. Water came right up to the mainland on this site. Under the pinkish water were the mud cracks that composed the salt flats. The landscape of the site suggested the artist “an immobile cyclone.” Smithson said: “This site was a rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness. From that spinning space emerged the possibility of the Spiral Jetty.” Smithson let the site determine what he would build. In April 1970, Smithson began building the jetty using heavy machinery and 6,650 tons of basalt and