How Heavy is the Cloud ? Rescaling extraction: from global flows to local circuits

Market Matters is a hybrid public and industrial building located on Albert Island in the Royal Docks, London. The project combines a future meat market with an urban mine for e-waste recycling, bringing together spaces of exchange, processing, storage, and public circulation.

The proposal is organised around the movement of materials through the site. Food, waste, metals, workers, visitors, and goods all follow visible routes, turning the building into a productive infrastructure rather than a hidden service space. Its material strategy contrasts heavy rammed-earth walls, made from excavated site soil, with lighter steel, glass, and polycarbonate structures for the industrial areas.

Conceptually, the project responds to contemporary systems of extraction and invisible supply chains. Sand, the most extracted resource globally, becomes a key reference linking the built environment and the digital economy through concrete, glass, and silicon technologies. While finished products appear detached from their origins, the labour, waste, energy, and environmental impact behind them often remain hidden. Through a glocal model combining local production and material recovery with wider global networks, Market Matters makes these systems visible, repositioning industry, recycling, and food logistics as part of civic and public life.