This article was taken from the December 2014 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
The Salina Turda, a series of vast salt caverns extending up to 120 metres beneath Romania's Cluj County, is an architect's nightmare. "Building in a salty environment is like building on the Moon," explains Bucharest architect Marius Danciu of Contact Studio. "Few materials can resist the humidity and other conditions." Alongside a team of 12 other architects and 30 engineers, Danciu took up the challenge to transform the salt mine into a tourist attraction -- complete with a Ferris wheel, playground, theatre and a mini sports complex.
Although the mine takes inspiration from Jules Verne and Erich Von Däniken's theories of extraterrestrial influences on human culture, the development itself is less futuristic: it was built with fir wood, the material most resilient to the site's 80 per cent humidity. "Everything gets old quickly.
It's like a time machine on fast-forward. The humid, salty air will create structures of salt, like on the surface of a shipwreck. Every wooden structure was designed to be <span class="s1">beautifully transformed in just a few years."
Close attention was paid to the structures' mechanical workings - because there was nowhere to hide them. "The salt mine is like the inside of the body. You see spine-like structures in the elevators, and cables and pipes like veins," says Danciu. "We wanted to challenge people's expectations for what they could find underground."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
