The more the world is becoming immaterial, the more the need for tangible, the more we are looking to confront ourselves with materiality, and find comfort in the rough. The research focuses on the tension between the accuracy of the machine and the indeterminacy of the material, using the material restrictions and failures to perform of the sand as valuable design drivers. The project investigates the emergence of primitive forms out of digital precision.

The design proposal lies in this ambivalence between a complete appreciation of our technological development, and a critique of a technology that turns the practice of architecture into an overly simplified making process, taking away the architect’s creativity and conditioning our design decisions.

The project assesses the need for a radical change in manufacturing processes, proposing a concrete building cast on earthwork. Even more than building with sand, the proposal investigates the possibility of making architecture with a hoover, using a subtractive device to shape the sand mould into a specific curvature. This construction method allows to take away the control of the design process from the computer, and algorithms, as the properties of sand introduce a randomness into the physical final product that can’t be controlled 100% with the software.