Over the centuries, especially in the post war period, we have accumulated an enormous but hidden wealth. We are surrounded by a man-made anthropogenic warehouses amounting to more than 50 billion tons of materials providing substantial resources for future generations.

Common Sands is a quantification of sand as a fundamental resource for our civilisation. Pointing out how much we are surrounded by sand without even noticing.

By using the silica components present in kitchen appliances as their primary material, the collection of glass vessels materialises the presence of sand. The size of the glass vessels relates back to the quantities of sand used in the various kitchen appliances. The use of glass in the kitchen setting has a lot to do with its hygienic properties in relation to food. This same basic idea was kept in the function given to the glass vessels. By staying within a setting related to food and the everyday but also by staying close to the soul of the object the base materials were sourced from. Depending on the different appliances we mine our resources from, the result will be an equally different type of glass. They tell a story, restore a relation between source, resource, product and user.

It is an attempt to close cycles, to bring back a human scale to the alienation of our resources. It shows possibilities for design to be of meaning in the way we handle the materials created from natural resources and explores ways to conceive a new economic cycle for the resource sand.

with the support of