About

For the past two years, Unit DS18 has explored the concept of emergence, foregrounding process-driven design methodologies as a means of generating architectural and landscape form. This exhibition marks the culmination of that investigation, presenting climatically responsive architectural proposals informed by the mapping, simulation, and analysis of natural phenomena across the Isles of Scilly.

Situated off the south-west coast of Britain, the Isles of Scilly comprise an archipelago of more than 140 fragmented granite outcrops, supporting an exceptional diversity of habitats. Coastal heathlands, wetlands, cultivated fields, shifting dunes, coral reefs, and saline lagoons coexist within a delicate ecological balance. Yet this landscape is increasingly vulnerable to climatic change. Rising sea levels, land subsidence, coastal erosion, and intensifying Atlantic storm systems are actively reshaping the archipelago, threatening both its ecosystems and communities.

Responding to these conditions, each student selected a specific environmental phenomenon for detailed investigation. Through observation, mapping, and simulation, they identified the temporal behaviours, material interactions, and spatial logics embedded within these dynamic systems. These findings were subsequently translated into architectural strategies and forms that operate as active agents within their environments, provoking questions about architecture’s capacity to engage with instability, adaptation, and ecological transformation.

Research lies at the core of DS18’s approach. Students assemble and analyse datasets, employ cartographic techniques to reveal hidden relationships, and utilise computational tools to model and simulate environmental processes. Through platforms including Grasshopper, Blender, QGIS, CFD software, and Houdini, design emerges from evidence-based inquiry rather than predetermined formal outcomes.

Together, the projects presented here explore how architecture might not merely withstand environmental change, but participate in and respond to the complex processes that shape our increasingly transient, unpredictable, and evolving world.

Guest Critics Thanks to: Alberto Fernandez (UCL) Dhruv Gulabchande (HFM Architects & Narrative Practice) Diana Fox (AHMM) Emma Colthurst (Uni of Greenwich) Dr Emma-Kate Matthews (UCL) Fraser Morrison (Orms & Future Fields Think Tank) Harry Charrington (UoW) Josh Haywood (AFK Studios) Justin Nicholls (Fathom Architects) Kate Cheyne (UoW) Katya Bryskina (Katyna Bryskina Studio & Uni of Greenwich) Lucia Rebolino (Lucia Rebolino & Forensic Architecture) Rachel Wakelin (dRMM, DS18 alumni)

2026 Students

Year 1

Camila Fuentes Graneros
Cristina Rosculete
Ingrid Fung
Jaan Farooq-Haynes
Michael Wong
Philip Koroshilov
Samantha Pennock
Tabbi Harvey-Crowe
Virali Patel

Year 2

Alexandra Louise Sapte
Dominika Zofia Budzinska
Edoardo Ripamonti
Samuel Calkins