The buildings history had been turbulent having changed hands many times and left as a vacant shell for many years. We restored the building, forensically investigating what we could find in the remaining shell and painstakingly putting the building back together. We collaborated with the artist in experimental expressions of time, playfully mismatching the past and the present, creating a multitude of illusions with materiality and form; trompe l’oeil, hand-painted torn Chinese wallpaper, entrance halls of real rock, denim canopies, rope walls.

Almost the whole footprint is taken up with a basement artists studio with an intricate system for 24 hour ‘natural’ light, out of which an office/studio pops up and out at the back of the first floor garden.

The final result is a creative and collaborative triumph, utterly distinctive, made absolutely of place and people. It is a building which has to be experienced to be understood.