A curatorial attitude to ‘building as backdrop’ led to a light-touch refurbishment approach that reveals the layered fabric of a found building. A former chapel – a rotting mess when we started work on it – has been stripped back to uncover columns, doors and fireplaces and to free spaces from earlier institutional subdivisions. Selected traces of all former occupants – both official and other – have been left to give curators and insitu artists something real to react to. Originally built as the Central Methodist Chapel in 1867, later used as the North London Drama Centre and later still abused by squatters for nearly a decade, the building is now an experimental exhibition space for the Zabludowicz Collection in London’s Chalk Farm.
