Sand @sagasofsand - Tumblr Blog

Link to our gigamap

"System Oriented Design Project" is a 10 week project conducted at NID, Ahmedabad guided by Prof.Praveen Nahar and Prof. Sahil Thappa. This

Link to our systems design booklet.

Link to our final gigamap <3

Compiling our Research

Friday, 25th November 2022, is the last day we are giving ourselves to compile our research. Yatin has been continuing to work on secondary information while Mansi, Lavnik and Varun have been focusing on going through recording and sorting out all the primary research.

We haven't been the most productive even though we have been on this throughout the day.

The list, as of now, looks something like this:

Pratik Shah (L) ☑️

Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava (L)☑️

Mr Bhargav Tewar

Swagata Naidu (M)

Dr Shailesh Kr. Agrawal

Pankaj Bansal (M) ☑️

Ravishankar Srinivasan

Vivek Sinha (L) ☑️

Kaushal - Royalty Inspector (Aud + Vid) (M) ☑️

DMF Office_IT Guy (V) ☑️

Audio Recordings of Sand mine visit - Office (M) ☑️

Video Recordings of Sand mine visit in the car and on the field (V) ☑️

Sand filtering plants (V)

Audio Recordings of Illegal Sand mine visit - Truckers (M) ☑️

Video Recordings of Illegal Sand mine visit

Yatin and Varun visit to Visalpur (V)

Narmada sands (L)

Lavnik Mansi visit to Vastu Traders (L)☑️

Shashank Nimkar

On Friday night, however, we also got to see Praveen Nahar's old office, where he showed us a bunch of resources like Toolkits, Systems Maps, Books etc.

Yatin

Primary and Secondary Research Collation

23rd November 2022 (Wednesday)

Today is the day we realized we were doing multiple things at once but we were not making sense of the data we collected or coming across on the web.

We came up with a game plan that we complete mapping down all the primary and secondary research we currently have and then further synthesize it into insights and work from there on. Insights are very important to proceed with the project is what we realized and started off the day with mapping on full swing.

Yatin and his beautifully color coded secondary research had some really interesting points related alternative methods of building techniques.

Mine Visit in Gandhinagar (3)

Stockyard Nearby

After the mines, we visited a stockyard nearby where extracted sand is processed and segregated into fine sand and gravel. Fine sand has particles smaller than 4.75mm and is used for construction purposes. Gravel is mainly used to construct roads, pathways, foundations and fill areas.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

SAND PIT

This is where the trucks put the sand that they bring from the river. It's a not-so-deep dugout covered by a grill (which I think is to separate the sand particles a little bit.

2. CONVEYOR BELT

This is carried up through a conveyor belt with many grooves on it. We didn't see the machine in action, but the workers said it can carry quite a bit of sand at any given time.

3. FILTRATION UNIT

The sand is then taken to the filtration unit.

4. SEPARATION

Once the sand is filtered, it falls onto different conveyor belts carrying it to its respective heaps ( silt, sand and gravel ).

The sand was separated into 4 heaps:

Gravel (Large)

Gravel (Small)

Sand

Mine Visit in Gandhinagar (2)

Site Visit - Shri Jayesh Yashwantlal Batot Weighbridge

Mine Visit in Gandhinagar (1)

DMF's (District Mineral Foundation) Office

Mr. Pratik Shah (Geologist) whom we had met during our visit to the CGM's office a few weeks ago, put us in touch with Mr. Alakh (Assistant Geologist) who further connected us with Mr. Kaushal (Royalty Inspector).

Kaushal sir first explained us everything in detail at the DMF's office - Collector & Jilla Seva Sadan Kacheri, Gandhinagar, after which he took us to a sand mine. We were extremely gratified for his helpful nature as he cleared his entire day's schedule for us and clarified all our doubts with utmost patience.

NID GANDHINAGAR

We commuted to NID Gandhinagar via the NID bus, where we had a tasty breakfast and a fun round of table tennis.

2. DMF'S OFFICE

While we waited for Kaushal sir in the DMF office, we came across a map of Gandhinagar highlighting the mining-affected areas.

3. UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS

axdsdfbn

4. E-AUCTION & ONLINE SYSTEM

htgf

Call with Shashank Nimkar

In the evening (12th Nov 2022) we had a very productive discussion with Shashank Nimkar, the founder of 'Earth Tatva - Recycled Ceramics' and our NID senior.

He gave us some insights about various techniques being tried out to convert different wastes like used glass bottles back into sand and the use of shredded plastic in the construction industry.

Making sense of the information so far

We started making a 'map' to make sense of all the information we gathered so far and of further research on the subjects, Praveen and Sahil had told us about just to collate all our information in one place.

Each day was individual research throughout the day followed by a discussion at 6 just to clarify each subject for everyone. We gathered a large amount of insights just in the first couple of days, from embedded energy to alternate construction methods to going into greater depth into the sand mafia.

TOPICS WE STARTED WITH

DAY 1

DAY 2

OUR MAP SO FAR :-

safety post

safety post-1

Speculative Video/ Workshop (4)

Video of the workshop

it will be updated after editing

Speculation Workshop: Evening

Collation of drawings

We had come up with those briefs as we did not want them to know that our group was working on a particular topic. So the first topic was to warm them up and the last one was to throw them off by thinking about why we are conducting this workshop.

At the very end, we had finally told them about what we are working on and why we conduct this workshop. With every group we had a long conversation about what is the current situation of resources and specifically sand and had asked them what they think of it and if they are aware that this is how it is in the world. All the participants of the workshop did appreciate sharing everything we had experienced during our primary research and were shocked after listening to it.

Speculation Workshop: Afternoon @ Exhib & CGD Studio

These workshops were super impromptu and very on the go which made it less restricting. We did not care what we would get from doing this as we needed a different perspective on what directions we could explore further.

In the briefing of these workshops, we did not mention anything about our topic of our project to them. We approached 3-4 people at once and asked them if they could spare some time to do something fun.

Each participant was provided with a couple of copier papers and sketch pens and had the freedom to draw and write an essay or poem.

They had 2-3 mins for each brief after which each participant had to explain what they did verbally on record. We had documented their explanations on a camera so that we could revisit them when we needed to and also for making a short movie of it :)

Workshop with Ceramic and Glass Design 2nd year students and Exhibition and spatial design 2nd year students.

Speculation Workshop : Morning @ PD & Anim Studio

All four of us were going through a mental block at this stage of the project, everyone collectively decided to do something fun which would help us get out of this block. In this process of brainstorming on what we could possibly do, we decided we should conduct a workshop and gain more perspective on our project from as many sources as possible. Our motive also was that we should talk to students around the institute about our project as we never do unless asked. One ground rule we set for ourselves was that we would not expect anything from this exercise we were trying out.

After this we immediately came up with a bunch of briefs; the briefs were as follows:

Imagine a world without water.

Imagine a world without sand.

Imagine a world without houses.

Workshop with Product Design 2nd year students & Animation and Film Design 3rd year students