Granular Configurations. Sand, Materiality, and Planetary Urbanization

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. Michaela has directed several short films, curated exhibitions, and published widely on the recursive relationship between technologies and environments. She is currently a postdoc at TU Dresden and an associated investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity. Image Space Material” at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. At K. Verlag, she also recently collaborated with the artist duo FRAUD on their publication EURO—VISION: Undergrounding Critical Raw Materials (published in October 2025), and is a contributor to intercalations 5—Decapitated Economies.  

Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality, and Planetary Urbanization, edited by Michaela Büsse. With contributions by Lara Almarcegui, Darin Barney, Arpita Bisht, Yus Budiyono, Michaela Büsse, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Katherine Dawson, Jeff Diamanti, FRAUD (Francisco Gallardo & Audrey Samson), Muhammad Soufi Cahya Gemilang, Dingeman L.H. van der Haven, William Jamison, Lukas Ley, Michiel J. van der Meulen, Hannah Tollefson, Ian The, Chester K. Wentworth, Jerry Zee, Chen Zhan, and Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa. Book design by K. Verlag with Wolfgang Hückel and Katharina Tauer.