Anyu Chan

Cartilaginous fish have an oil-filled liver instead of a gas-filled bladder to control their buoyancy underwater in order to swim. In most cases, 20% of a shark body is its liver. Around 96% of that oil is squalene.

Squalene was first used throughout East Asia and is now being used worldwide. 2,200 tons of oil are annually harvested—one ton of oil being extracted from 3,000 sharks. This means, over 3million deep-sea sharks are killed each year to meet the squalene demand. And the demand is our skin. 90 percent of squalene harvested in sharks is used in insatiable amounts of skincare products, and the other 9% is in the supplement industry packaged in soft-shell capsules.

The search for a remedy to skin youthfulness dates back to the Han Dynasty in China. A woman's skin health was known to indicate social classes and significantly related to one’s frequent relationship with the sun, or lack of. It also ties itself to one’s involvement in labour.

The search, however, comes with a price, an unknown price to its user.

A shark caught at sea is immediately cut in half, their liver spilled out of their body due to its size. After the cut and spill, the shark is still alive and often thrown back into the ocean. Without its oil and usually also its fins, it is unable to swim and sinks to the bottom of the ocean to slowly die.

The aim of the project is to intervene in squalene users’ daily rituals, confronting the disconnect between the source and the end product exploited by the beauty industry in the Hong Kong contemporary market, where extraction from the ocean is wildly executed but never shown. The barbaric act related to squalene costs millions of deaths reduced to a jar of smooth, spreadable, shear coloured moisturiser used and rubbed daily by many.

Lack of Transparency

Due to its unethical origin, many brands do not specify the source on their labels. Squalene supplements from China labelled “shark liver oil”, as “tilapia”, a type of inexpensive freshwater fish on international export documents. In the world of cosmetics, the lack of transparency is heightened when squalene often hides behind the category of “Fragrance”, a loophole allowing fragrances to be exempt on the cosmetic ingredient’s list.

The project looks at Tai O, Hong Kong, a fishing port that flourished in the mid-1900s. Tai O is segregated from the main metropolis centre of Hong Kong. Therefore, the site is to be visited where a focused series of rituals will take place, juxtaposing the daily mindlessness of squalene usage. The body of water in Tai O is where sharks once heavily aggregated. Fish was the islands main source of income, simultaneously, salt production was also developed as an important secondary local industry. At its peak in the 1930s, there were 70 acres of fields producing about 1,500 tons of salt per year. Salt was and still is traditionally used locally for salting fish. Since locals have been so familiar with the use of salt in preservation, it also has a history of being used on one’s skin as a folk practice exfoliator.

Due to the decline of all original economies in Tai O, most of the current earnings for villagers come from Hong Kong metropolitan tourists who buy minimum local delicacies such as salted fish and salted shrimp paste. The lack of activity and the decrease in the local population has alarmed the government to actively propose a complete revitalisation of Tai O. Current villagers recognise the need for touristic income yet wish for a fair balance to keep their generational ways of living. The project’s ambition is to revitalise labour by re-activating these abandoned salt pans. Not only are villagers’ expertise valued, but steady income will also be generated from the retreat.

The architecture consists entirely of overlayed meshes where salt treatments for human skin are carried out. The meshes will accumulate salt deposits to create layers of the “coastal epidermis” – a new barrier for both human and on-site coastal ecologies. The level of overlaps suggests salty accumulation of spatial interactions, forming walkways, different enclosure heights, openness and enclosed spaces. It will also determine the lighting and intimacy to cater to each specific salt treatment it houses.

The architectural intervention is to create a new norm of restoration, for both one’s wellness and the Tai O exhausted coastal habitat moving away from the ways of oceanic extraction. It is to introduce a typology of “skin” to house individual human bodies and the body of the site as a public salt treatment strait.

The current bridge is called the Tai O promenade, a 500m linear passage bridging between Lantau Trail Section 7 and Tai O Ferry Pier. The promenade cuts straight into the South China Sea – waters which sharks once dwelled in before a decline in the 2000s. It is also a barrier that segments abandoned salt pans from the 1970s, now turned into mangroves. The bridge currently acts as a line that separates the ocean and the salt pan, blocking any accessibility by humans onto both. The project uses this existing bridge platform as the basis of the strait. The bridge is however modified by first dismantling the existing 1.2m-high concrete balustrades. Not only were they a governmental product, but they are also a visual reminder for the people of Tai O of the ever-seeping governmental control over their habitat. To the government and its visitors, the promenade is to provide convenience in tourism, yet to the people of Tai O, it is a form of alienation, a subtle invasion to what they are familiar with, that they fear one day will have to give away. The project turns this into something the villagers can be proud of, an architecture where villagers are the key players for its realisation.

The modified bridge is broken down into 5 zones where the salt pans – the source of the treatment – are visible and accessible to all. The new modified bridge also refuses separation between where sharks once dwelled and where humans now linger, as well as demonstrating openness to the current ecology.

Salt is not only the treatment; it is also the genetic make-up of the architecture. The salty Coastal Epidermis will be watered once a day, taking less time to evaporate compared to the salt pans. This also ensures that labour is actively generating income all year round unlike traditional salt production where labour on salt pans was typically halted from May to September in fear of consistent rain. The architecture will continue to grow as the salt accumulates over years, documenting seasonality and progress over time.

The skin-like infrastructure provides the enclosure to the treatments as well as housing the threatened biodiversity of the mangroves on site. The increase of salt accumulation will also start to provide vital feeding grounds for the decreasing ecology in Hong Kong.

The re-activated salt pans will provide salt for both the treatment and the accumulation of salt deposit on meshes. Seawater will flow through a channel and be collected in two separate reservoirs.

1st Reservoir

The first reservoir will lead water into warming pans before entering into the salt pans for evaporation. It is then evaporated under the intense Hong Kong sun for 5 days before harvest to provide for each treatment.

2nd Reservoir

The second reservoir will lead seawater into filtration ponds to increase salinity. The water will then be pumped onto the top of each mesh in its designated zone. The saline water will flow down the meshes and be caught by the nook on the mesh design. The water will rapidly evaporate due to the hot sun with average temperatures ranging from 18 - 38 degrees Celsius leaving only the salt behind, attached to the meshes.

Aiding in this evaporation are the prevailing on-shore northwest winds during the day and the offshore southeast winds during the night. When rain does arrive, they constructively aid in cleansing and washing away loose particles from the forming ‘salt skin.’

The treatment is accessible to the public. It still acts as a bridge if the public does not wish to engage in the treatment facilities. The treatment application is done by the public themselves but set out and maintained by the salt ambassadors. Each treatment area will have the provision of instructions for specific actions.

Each treatment lasts 2 hours according to the Chinese Human Body Clock. The clock exists as a baseline for our own seasonality of health. Our energy or Qi moves through the organ systems in two-hour intervals. Based on Chinese practices, the health of our skin has been long determined to be related to general organ health – to start from within. Whereas western influences have penetrated into this ancient system by suggesting the health of our skin is to start from the surface instead. Therefore, the treatment is not only to honour the site, its original line of labour and its landscape, it also roots itself back into the culture and origins of its users.

Due to our obsessive desire to stay young and the psychological needs and comfort to retain the unattainable, we have been influenced to take the ocean and spread it on our bodies costing millions of sharks a year. Now, through transparency, this idea of promises in a capsule will be altered, ultimately honouring the ocean and anchoring users to an open process as well as to their own origins of health.