Archinect - News

Construction is feeding a global sand crisis, says new study

2021-07-02T13:13:00-04:00

A new scientific paper has warned of the looming environmental and social consequences of the world’s appetite for sand. The study, headed by Aurora Torres at Michigan State University’s fisheries and wildlife school, notes that the global demand for sand and gravel is set to double by 2060, driven by the construction and expansion of cities and infrastructure.

The study, published in the journal One Earth, notes that “sand, gravel, and crushed rock, together referred to as construction aggregates, are the [world’s] most extracted solid materials. Growing demand is damaging ecosystems, triggering social conflicts, and fueling concerns over sand scarcity. Balancing protection efforts and extraction to meet society's needs requires designing sustainable pathways at a system level.”

In total, around 50 billion tons of sand, gravel, and crushed rock are used by humankind each year. As a key ingredient in the production of concrete and glass, sand plays an important role in the constr...

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."

Artist Calvin Seibert races against time in building these modernist sandcastles

2016-11-22T18:04:00-05:00

Building “sandcastles” is a bit of a test. Nature will always be against you and time is always running out. Having to think fast and to bring it all together in the end is what I like about it...Once I begin building and forms take shape I can start to see where things are going and either follow that road or attempt to contradict it with something unexpected.

Professional sculptor Calvin Seibert builds “sandcastle” structures that look like they could be straight from the sketchbooks of architecture's modernist icons. Whenever he starts sculpting his next sand structure, he usually only has “a vague notion of trying to do something different each time”, and mixes various ideas and inspirations as he goes.

Here are a few of Seibert's sandcastles he has sculpted over the last few years.

You can find more of Seibert's sandcastles on his Flickr, or follow him on Instagram.

h/t Colossal

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).