Y3: Architectural Design Explorations

The third year design studio, “Digital Ecologies”, emphasized a design methodology centered on designing with data. We explored the dynamic between digital registration of environmental (big) data remotely and the physical registration of environmental (small) data on site using “sensing prosthetics” of our own design. Working in a group we designed remediative landscapes in Dalgety Bay, Scotland, a site contaminated by radioactive material, grounding the highly speculative and explorative design methodology using digital tools in a real, ‘live’ project.

Through a series of analogue, digital and hybrid models, we merged big data/small data sensibilities, treating the site as a vast, calibrated remediative machine. This showed how the contextual environment in which architecture is situated today has been augmented as a result of digital innovation: an ecology of digital networks overlaid on the physical world.