TRACING SAND
The journey of Tracing Sand is a pilgrimage for two recovering architects, seeking to reconnect with the fundamental elements of our surroundings—the concrete foundations, the lime mortar on the walls, the window glass—all made from sand and derived from rivers and land in one form or another.
We follow sand as a guide to unpack the coming-into-being of iconic sites—their form, materiality, the energy that sustains them, and how they enter socio-cultural imaginations. It is also a journey to trace unexpected connections between sites, communities, and ecosystems. Rather than investigating direct causality, Tracing Sand is about exploring entangled relations through fieldwork. For us, it is crucial to understand these relations not in an abstract way, but through tangible, specific registers and embodied experiences.
The current phase of the project focuses on the Mekong River Basin regions in Southeast Asia, from its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau in China to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and by extension to Singapore.
LINKS
Overview of the project: Drifting Bodies [Columbia GSAPP AAD Argument Lecture]
CREDITImages by Chen Zhan and Jingru (Cyan) Cheng
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This ongoing work is supported by the Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize and the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s CCA-Mellon multidisciplinary research programme.