While designed to visually seduce, Dune is not primarily a formal exercise but a social, ecological, cultural one.
I found out that there was this project called the 'Great Green Wall' where they wanted to plant trees across the Sahara desert, and the idea was born that I wanted to create a support structure for that initiative.
Sand dunes are almost like ready-made buildings in a way. All we need to do is solidify the parts that we need to be solid, and then excavate the sand, and we have our architecture. We can either excavate it by hand, or we can have the wind excavate it for us.
In a way, architecture is about communication. That's an aspect of the discipline that is somewhat lacking, and there's definitely room for more progression into that area. I suppose that gives me a bit of a different edge. I'm also very, very used to doing a lot of exhaustive research and finding interesting information from different sources.
Rather than just mimic processes in nature, I think we can harness the powers of nature itself and allow it to help us create. That, in a way is what the 'Dune' project is all about.
One billion grains of sand come into existence in the world each second. That's a cyclical process. As rocks and mountains die, grains of sand are born. Some of those grains may then cement naturally into sandstone. And as the sandstone weathers, new grains break free. Some of those grains may then accumulate on a massive scale, into a sand dune.
