If there is one thing we have a lot of in the UAE, it's sand - vast, immeasurable stretches of it that fills up most of the country. It's a material that architects, designers and developers do not think about enough. They should take inspiration from <b>Magnus Larsson</b> , a student at the <b>Architectural Association</b> in London, who proposed a 6,000km wall of "artificially solidified sandstone architecture that would span the Sahara Desert" as a means to stop the encroaching desert and provide refugee housing. How? Pumping a kind of bacteria called into the sand that turns loose granules into sand stone. Mr Larsson won first price at the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction in Marrakech last year. The project is aptly titled "Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture". See the full proposal here: (Hat tip to , the most interesting site on the internet to read about such things). <b>Masdar</b> could use the idea to create a mammoth underground city in the Empty Quarter that is powered by solar panels on surface or the Government could create small shelters for camel farmers in Liwa to hide out in during the hottest days. Or the bacteria could provide the foundation for master developments that are the reversal of skyscrapers - deep holes with apartments and offices facing inward. This is exactly what the originally proposed for <b>Nakheel</b> 's Waterfront masterplan, but the company opted for a spherical building instead.