Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality, and Planetary Urbanization – Book launch

Book launch of Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality, and Planetary Urbanization with Michaela Büsse (editor) and Francisco Gallardo/FRAUD (contributor)

Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality, and Planetary Urbanization explores the world’s most used—yet often overlooked—building material: sand. Bringing together voices from geography, geology, social sciences, art, and the humanities, the book traces how sand moves and transforms, resisting easy capture by political and ecological systems. From extractive practices and colonial legacies to fragile infrastructures and grassroots struggles, sand emerges here not just as a resource, but as an unstable force shaping the planetary urban condition.

Michaela Büsse is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner based in Berlin. Her research explores environmental speculation and emerging material and territorial configurations shaped by planetary urbanization and the climate crisis.

FRAUD (Audrey Samson, Francisco Gallardo) is an undisciplinary pack whose practice interrogates UK and European legal systems that perpetuate resource- and commodity-oriented relations.