Silicon Dioxide (aka Silica and Sand)

Sand is hardly a material that is on a designer’s radar. However it deserves a mention in this book due to two very different projects using it as a material from which new techniques of production have been born.

There is growing evidence to suggest that the future will be defined by new uses for old materials. An increasing number of inventors from design backgrounds have taken to scavenging the world of materials that are traditionally perceived more as substances than as materials. The bio-manufactured brick is a project developed in the deserts of the United Arab Emirates that uses bacteria combined with sand, salt and urea from animal urine (a common element in urea-formaldehyde plastics) to turn sand into a usable building element. Developed by Ginger Krieg Dosier of the American University of Sharjah, the process combines readily available ingredients to make a brick without the intense heat usually associated with making ceramics.

Another project that uses sand as a raw material is much more simple but no less inspiring. Developed by designer Markus Kayser, the SolarSinter project takes a machine powered exclusively by the sun and uses its energy to sinter – a process that uses heat to fuse fine particles together – sand into solid objects. Although this is a project more about a new manufacturing process rather than a material, it illustrates how designers are taking a lead in the search for alternative materials from which to make products.

Image: Better Brick project