Edinburgh College of Art student Peter Trimble has built a portable machine for manufacturing furniture from sand, urine and bacteria (+ slideshow). More about Stools made of sand and urine by Peter Trimble
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in this movie filmed at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, artist Gijs van Bon shows us his machine called Skryf, which prints a trail of sand behind it to form letters on the ground. More about Gijs van Bon's Skryf machine "writes poems on the ground with sand"
Design Miami 2013: giant mound of sand appears to support an aluminium roof at New York studio Formlessfinder's Tent Pile installation outside this year's Design Miami fair, which opens to the public today (+ slideshow). More about A pile of sand marks the entrance to Design Miami
Design Miami 2013: the entrance pavilion for the Design Miami collectors' fair in December will comprise a mound of sand with an aluminium roof perched on top. More about Design Miami pavilion to feature a pile of sand
Californian designer Chad Wright has made a sandcastle mould of a typical American house to recreate post-war suburbia on the beach (+ slideshow). More about Master Plan by Chad Wright
To prove that germs aren't all bad, Paris-based studio Bold-design came up with an activity kit that uses bacteria to turn sand from the beach into stone souvenirs (+ slideshow). More about Memorabilia Factory by Bold-design
Dezeen archive: this week one of our most popular stories was about a robot that builds architectural structures from sand (bottom left), so our latest archive is all about sand. See all all the stories »
More about Dezeen archive: sand
Students from Barcelona's Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia have built a robotic 3D printer that creates architectural structures from sand or soil (+ movie). More about Stone Spray Robot by Anna Kulik, Inder Shergill and Petr Novikov
Stars are printed in the sand by a tractor as it drags a giant roller back and forth across the beach, then left to fade at the mercy of footsteps and the tide in this installation by Swedish artist Gunilla Klingberg. More about A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg
Discarded bottles sourced from hotels, restaurants, homes and foreign embassies are being filled with sand and used as bricks to create curved-walled houses in a Nigerian village. More about Plastic bottles filled with sand used to build houses in Nigeria
Qubique 2011: Tel Aviv designer Nir Meiri uses desert sand to create these tactile moulded lights. More about Desert Storm by Nir Meiri
Vienna Design Week 2011: a rotating arm deposits spirals of quartz sand on the showroom floor at crystal company Lobmeyr in Vienna this week, thanks to Canadian designer Philippe Malouin. More about Time Elapsed by Philippe Malouin and Lobmeyr
These vases made of sand are shaped according to the principles of an old Japanese game. More about Sand by Yukihiro Kaneuchi
Dezeen Screen: this movie by Royal College of Art graduate Markus Kayser shows his Solar Sinter 3D-printing machine at work in the desert, making glass objects by melting sand with sunlight. Watch the movie »
More about Dezeen Screen: The Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser
Stockholm 2011: ECAL graduate Vanessa Hordies has created this bedside lamp that works like an hour glass to gradually dim the light by covering it in sand. More about Night Night by Vanessa Hordies
In this short interview we conducted as part of our Food and Design report for luxury kitchen appliances brand Scholtès, Design Academy Eindhoven chairwoman Anne Mieke Eggenkamp presents graduate projects involving food, including this system that uses sand to keep vegetables fresh (above). Update: this project is included in Dezeen Book of Ideas, which is on sale now for £12. More about Food and design videos: Design Academy Eindhoven
These conceptual cooling units by London designers PostlerFerguson would be made from 3D-printed sand. More about Microclimates by PostlerFerguson
Dezeen are in Venice for the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 where Lisbon firm Aires Mateus Architects are exhibiting these houses with sandy floors, photographed by Nelson Garrido. More about Casa Areia by Aires Mateus Architects
Paris architects Laetitia Delubac and Christian Félix have completed a holiday home and guest house in Siwa, Egypt. More about Ecolodge by Laetitia Delubac and Christian Félix
Design Indaba 08: here's a new set of photos showing progress on the first sand-bag house being built at Freedom Park in Cape Town, South Africa. More about Sand-bag houses by MMA architects 4