Samuel Calkins

Year 2 MArch

DRIFT

Isle of Scilly, St. Marys Island, UK

Drift is a coastal memorial and environmental intervention located at Bar Point in the Isles of Scilly. Set within one of the archipelago’s largest dune landscapes, the project responds to rising sea levels, coastal erosion, dune migration, and the gradual loss of human and natural memory. The building is imagined as a ceremonial landscape where architecture, climate, and time become physically entangled. Granite boulders and concrete foundations form barriers that trap windblown sand, allowing dunes to accumulate, shift, and eventually bury parts of the structure.

Above, heliostat mirrors concentrate sunlight to melt local sand into layers of reddish glass, recording moments of climate and weather within the fabric of the building. Columbarium walls, memorial spaces, and buried thresholds create a place for remembrance, grief, and reflection. Rather than resisting change completely, Drift works with erosion, burial, and transformation to make climate loss visible, spatial, and permanent.