The best plans — and friendships! — are forged over lunch. Our week began with a visit to our studio in Folkestone from Ahmed Paul Keeler.
Ahmed is best known for formulating and organising The World of Islam Festival that took place in London in 1976 – the most comprehensive exposition of Islamic culture ever to take place in the West. His academic practice is now centred around judging the success of human culture through the criteria of MĪZĀN — balance, scale and justice — which is at the heart of Islam.
We are hugely proud to commence an exciting collaboration with Ahmed and will reveal more information soon. We are grateful to receive his authored books for our Reading Room: ‘Rethinking Islam & The West: A New Narrative for The Age of Crises’; ‘Breaching the Mīzān: From a Sacred to a Secular World’; ‘A Life’s Journey: The Story behind a Book’; and ‘Gazan Awakening’.
Our Reading Room is open to the public every Friday afternoon — all are welcome.
SD Projects and Kelpcrete Ltd are pleased to announce the launch of Kelpcrete – a low-carbon construction material that uses minerals extracted from cultivated seaweed as a binding component for architectural and structural applications.
Kelpcrete sources its seaweed from Norfolk Seaweed Farm, a UK-based commercial kelp farm with established harvesting and processing infrastructure. By linking marine cultivation with material innovation, Kelpcrete proposes a new construction supply chain rooted in renewable coastal resources, regional sourcing and low-impact manufacturing.
The development of Kelpcrete is supported by Innovate UK, enabling laboratory validation, mineral extraction optimisation and structural performance testing. Research and materials analysis are being undertaken in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University, supporting rigorous testing, compression analysis and scientific documentation.
Kelpcrete connects marine ecology with the built environment, advancing a regenerative material model that shifts construction away from extractive mineral systems toward cultivated, climate-responsive alternatives.
Where culture is lived, authored, and exchanged, Intersections 2.0: Reading Room brings together more than 200 books and 300 artefacts that trace the rich threads of Islamic architecture, visual culture, and diasporic heritage.
In collaboration with @shahed.saleem , @farwamoledina , @mahtabhussain and the local East Kent community.
Now open. All welcome.
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#IntersectionsProject #ReadingRoom #YouthVoices #CreativeFolkestone #FolkestoneTriennial
Today marks Nakba Day. A day that remembers the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 in the wake of the creation of the Israeli state.
The story of the creation of Israel has been widely told without acknowledging the destruction of over 400 villages and the forced removal of an entire population. The many forced to leave still hold the keys to their homes, a right of return affirmed in UN Resolution 194 (1948), yet never realised.
History is never neutral and a louder voice can obscure material realities. As All That Remains documents, many of the villages erased in 1948 were later built over, renamed, or left to disappear. In academic and archaeological discourse, narratives have often prioritised state mythology over material evidence, reinforcing a version of history that obscures Palestinian experience.
The settler and state violence ongoing in Palestine today is not separate from 1948, but part of an unbroken line, where displacement, land loss, and control over resources continue through both violence and bureaucracy.
Our Reading Room holds books that challenge dominant narratives and centre Palestinian voices.
Featured here: All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated in 1948 by Walid Khalidi — a landmark visual and historical record of the villages destroyed during the Nakba.
All are welcome to explore the collection, learn, and reflect.
Our collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University is entering an exciting new phase. Here you can see Despina Plistaka and Professor Cornelia Wilson at Discovery Park. They are processing material from our sugar kelp harvest using acid leach and centrifuge techniques to test mineral yield and explore the material potential of British cultivated kelp.
The research forms part of SD Projects’ wider work around sustainable materials, circular design, and environmentally rooted cultural production — connecting scientific testing with experimental approaches to making and resource use in Kent.
#kelpcrete #sustainablematerials #sustainablearchitecture #sustainableconstruction
Next week will be a much-anticipated debut for both Chase Gardens and Kelpcrete at Chelsea Flower Show, together they will create an environmentally sustainable space from an environmentally sustainable material.
Intersections: Reading Room is a free, public space at our studio, The Old Post Office, open every Friday from 12–5pm. You are invited to read and reflect, to convene and converse. This is a shared cultural resource – part library, part meeting place – which connects Folkestone with the world beyond by making knowledge accessible and advances our shared histories, stories, by encouraging conversations.
A rotating reading list selected by guest curators is added monthly to our library. The compilation by writer Tharik Hussain offers an entry point into themes of Muslim Europe, travel, and identity; researcher Imad Ahmed’s selection considers the themes of Islam, faith, astronomy and timekeeping; author Cathy Haynes focusses on concepts and measures of time, the sky and living world. In this way, the Reading Room continues to evolve over time, shaped by contributors, collaborators, and the communities who use it.
We look forward to seeing you today and every Friday!
An RHS Chelsea Flower Show debut for Chase Gardens and Kelpcrete!
Landscape Designer Charlie Chase gives a behind-the-scenes peek at the ‘pre-build’ at Frogheath of his upcoming YoungMinds Garden at @the_rhs Chelsea.
Charlie will use Kelpcrete, a new low-carbon binding material created by Simon Davenport, @sdprojects.uk , in all hard landscaping elements of the garden. Kelpcrete uses minerals extracted from cultivated seaweed as a binding component for architectural and structural applications.
The development of Kelpcrete is supported by Innovate UK; Kelpcrete sources its seaweed from Norfolk Seaweed Farm with research and materials analysis are being undertaken in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University. #kelpcrete #chelseaflowershow #youngminds #chasegardens #sustainablematerials
Earlier this week, bricklaying students at East Kent College were invited to put Kelpcrete to test by using it as mortar mix instead of cement. The live demonstration revealed Kelpcrete’s potential as a bio-based alternative to cement in bricklaying.
Testing materials in hands-on training environments is a key step in understanding the qualities and reliability of Kelpcrete in real-world applications. Understanding the workability, adhesion, and on-site performance of Kelpcrete are key steps in moving beyond lab development to practical use in construction.
Thank you EKC and our cohort of students for engaging so energetically with emerging materials and supporting applied research in sustainable construction.
#kelpcrete #sustainableconstruction #sustainablematerials #construction #architecture
Kelpcrete in practice.
Today, we invited bricklaying students at East Kent College to work with a Kelpcrete mortar mix in a live demonstration. This showed them Kelpcrete’s potential as a bio-based alternative for bricklaying in a real-world application.
Testing materials in hands-on training environments is a key step in understanding workability, adhesion, and on-site performance of Kelpcrete, helping move from lab development toward practical use in construction.
Thank you EKC for engaging with emerging materials and supporting applied research in sustainable construction.
In some parts of Europe, shepherds knew it was time to bring their flock back to shelter when their sheep’s eye pupils changed from a slit to a round!
If you, too, are fascinated by the natural world and marking, understanding, observing and experiencing ‘Time’, join us at The Old Post Office on Friday 1 May at 6pm for a discussion between writer, curator and artist Cathy Haynes (author of The Fullness of Time and the source of this wonderful anecdote) and Imad Ahmed, founder of Astronomy network New Crescent Society.
This talk is part of ‘First Fridays by SD Projects’ – a monthly series of cultural programming in our Folkestone studio. Food will be served after the talk when there will be an opportunity to mingle with the speakers, other guests and our team. This is a free event; all are welcome – please book a ticket via link in bio.
Writer, curator, artist and educator Cathy Haynes will be in conversation with Imad Ahmed, founder of British grassroots astronomy network New Crescent Society, on Friday 1 May, 6pm, at The Old Post Office in Folkestone. Their discussion will explore how time is marked, understood, observed, and experienced in different traditions, connecting astronomy, theology, and lived experience.
Cathy, in particular, is fascinated by the simple methods ordinary people once had of marking times of day by the sky and the living world in the British Isles and wider Europe. For example, how medieval Christians told time by the Sun and stars – including by this very approximate but exquisitely made early-English pocket sundial found buried under the floor at Canterbury Cathedral.
This is a free event, open to the public – please book via link in bio. There will be an opportunity to speak with Cathy, Imad and fellow guests over food after the event.
