The Back Of House Collective

“The Back Of house Collective” re-imagines a fragment of the former Tate & Lyle refinery at Silvertown as a cultural production and teaching space, transforming a site of industrial manufacture into one of creative exchange, in response to the acquisition of half the factory space to turn it into a high end media production facility. Rather than erasing the past, the proposal works with the existing structural frame, preserving its scale, material and presence, while introducing a series of lightweight, adaptable insertions that support new programmes of filming, learning, and night-life. The architecture embraces contrast—heavy and light, permanent and temporary, industrial and cultural—allowing the logic of the original factory to inform the spatial organisation of the new intervention.

At its core, the project operates less as a fixed building and more as a shifting condition—an evolving framework that absorbs, adapts, and reconfigures over time. It treats the existing structure as a host and the new interventions as transient occupants, creating a dynamic relationship between permanence and change. Space is understood as something to be activated rather than defined, where programme, atmosphere, and occupation continuously reshape the architecture. In this sense, the project becomes a mechanism for transformation, where the residue of industry is not preserved as static heritage, but reanimated as a catalyst for new forms of cultural production.