Granular Configurations is a book about sand. It explores the world’s most widely used yet often overlooked building material – literally, as this book calls it, 'the bedrock of urbanisation' – gathering voices from geography, geology, social sciences, art and the humanities to trace how sand moves and transforms, resisting easy capture by political and ecological systems.
From extractive practices and colonial legacies to grassroots struggles and fragile infrastructures, sand emerges not just as a resource but as an unstable force shaping the planetary urban condition. The book is edited by Michaela Büsse, an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner based in Berlin whose research explores environmental speculation and emerging material and territorial configurations shaped by planetary urbanisation and the climate crisis.
K. Verlag, 302pp, 17cm x 23cm, illustrated paperback, 2026
