17 Quotes by Magnus Larsson

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.

I started off in journalism 16 years ago in Stockholm, and I wrote for a few different publications for many years. I've also worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director, but I changed it for architecture at 25 years old.

One of the most obvious reasons to start using timber rather than concrete is that it's the one commonly grown and therefore exceptionally renewable building material that we have available to us. And it acts as storage for carbon dioxide.

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.

If you happen to live close to the desert border, you can pretty much calculate how long it will be before you have to carry your kids away and abandon your home and your life as you know it.

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.

We're stuck in the concrete age. Concrete has really become this ever-present material that's almost impossible to get away from. It's cheap, abundant, and easy to work with, and to an extent, that's good.

I find it slightly absurd that the only thing we consume more of than water is concrete.

How are we to live with the desert, in the desert, within the desert?