Archinect - News

How our demand for sand fuels a violent global black market

2019-11-20T16:22:00-05:00

The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains. And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand.

Writing for BBC Future, Vince Beiser explains how sand — a very specific kind of sand — has become the second most consumed natural resource on the planet, fueling global environmental destruction, criminal enterprises, and even "sand wars."

"The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains," Beiser writes. "And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand."

As Singapore grows from the sea, its heritage continues to shrink

2018-03-12T14:38:00-04:00

Short on space, the city-state has since its independence been reclaiming land to build the nation and to rewrite 'unhygienic' episodes of its history.

In his essay for Failed Architecture, William Jamieson, a PhD candidate in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, takes a look at Singapore's monumental land reclamation efforts since 1965, the ecological, urban, and cultural implications, and the inevitable erasing of heritage.

"Singapore sees itself as chronically undersized," Jamieson writes. "It imagines itself as a larger country, and works backwards: materialising the necessary geographical puzzle pieces to suit the demands of the global economy as much as to satiate its own needs. Space is not merely flexible, but hypothetical."

Entrepreneurs seek solutions to solve Lagos' housing crisis

2017-01-25T13:24:00-05:00

From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions

Nancy Kacungira looks at how entrepreneurs are tackling the housing crisis in Lagos.

Venice Lagoon declared most endangered heritage site in Europe

2016-03-17T15:37:00-04:00

The Venice Lagoon is the most endangered heritage site in Europe, declared the pan-European heritage organisation Europa Nostra at an event today [...]. Rising sea levels, swelling number of tourists, large cruise ships in the lagoon, the erosion of the sea bed, dredging deeper channels and the lack of an agreed management plan for Venice has created a perfect storm of threats to the city’s preservation.

Previously in the Archinect news:

Building New York City's sixth borough

2015-08-18T11:40:00-04:00

If it is possible, financially and technologically, to build a three-acre park in the river west of New York City, then why isn’t it possible to construct an artificial island at a higher elevation than downtown Manhattan that would serve as New York City’s sixth borough? Many of the city’s problems—real estate prices, developers purchasing blocks at a time, the astronomical cost of parking a car, or even a bicycle, even shoreline erosion—are problems of space. So why not just build more space?

Sand/geo-politics, land reclamation, "sand wars" and secular(ism)

2015-01-26T19:30:00-05:00

To make matters more turbid, the nightmare of coastal reclamation occupies an imaginary and regulatory space created by several misunderstandings about territory itself. These become urgent against both the backdrop of our “oceanic” moment and the apparent dissolution of that idyll of 19th- and 20th-century geopolitical thought, the grounded state.

Joshua Comaroff writes about contemporary sand/geo-politics, land reclamation, "sand wars" and secular(ism).

China is busy building islands in the South China Sea

2014-09-08T21:18:00-04:00

But I’ve seen aerial photographs of this place taken by the Philippine navy. They show the massive land reclamation work China has been doing here since January. Millions of tonnes of rock and sand have been dredged up from the sea floor and pumped into the reef to form new land.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes travels to the South China Sea, where the Chinese state is building islands.

Yes. Sediment. Fascinating

2014-01-24T13:45:00-05:00

Why Louisiana? Well, there are few (if any) other places in North America in which sedimentary geology is more profoundly felt as part of daily life. As I’ve recounted elsewhere on this blog (here and here), southern Louisiana was built up entirely from about 8,000 years of sediments deposited by the Mississippi River.

Following the conclusion of DredgeFest Louisiana Adam Mandelman reviews the time he spent in the company of what he affectionately calls "sediment nerds".

Meanwhile, over at the NOLA Defender, Christopher Staudinger penned a dispatch reviewing the tour portion of Dredgefest, for the Afternoon Diversions column.

bracket [goes soft]: Dredge Locked

2012-04-19T13:10:00-04:00

In anticipation of today's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we are showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you tonight!

Dredge Locked
by Alex Yuen

Unnoticed by many, Houston’s shipping channel, like many such commercial waterways around the globe, is subjected to a continual process of dredging, in order to maintain a certain breadth and depth to accommodate the vessels that enter and leave Houston every day. This material, however, is seldom regarded as anything but waste and is deposited and contained, either within the channel or on shore, taking up space and spreading the harmful bi-products of the petrochemical facilities in the area. Up to this point, such actions have rarely been scrutinized and this system of isolating and hiding the contaminated material, even at such a massive scale, continues. Yet as the world and Houston move into a new era of awareness and accountability, major possibilities are lost by simply sweeping ...