Arts Bank

Chance de Silva was set up to explore the possibilities of architecture in interaction with other participants. They might be artists, designers, musicians, community groups or performers.

They seek projects which broaden the remit and push the boundaries - which allow exploration and experimentation. They have worked, for example, with artists Matt Hale and Frank Watson on the Venus project, and with Kirsty Brooks at Cargo Fleet. These works became an integral part of the architecture.

They also explore new materials, and materials used in new ways. They researched rusting steel in Finland for their Cargo Fleet project. Their work is not just about space, or the qualities of materials, but about what they evoke or express.

Chance de Silvas work has been featured on TV in the UK and France, published in the national press, and featured on the radio in the UK, and in books in France, Spain and the UK.

About the Cargo Fleet project and Limited Edition Artists Book

Like many in this area ours was a steelmaking family. Being brought up in Redcar my route to the outside world was the train journey to Middlesbrough and beyond, the line through the steelworks.

The stations on that line gave access to the many production plants of the different steelmaking processes – the blast furnaces, the mills, the coke ovens and so on. A tile map on Middlesbrough station still shows the many lost stations of the railway network in the north east, and our project is named after one: Cargo Fleet.

In 2005 we completed an architectural project called Cargo Fleet which had as its inspiration the steelworks where several generations of my family worked.

We worked with two artists recording aspects of the buildings and landscape along the railway line between Redcar and Middlesbrough. Our project drew inspiration – imagery, materials and form – from this evolving landscape and became one concerning salvage – of imagery rather than physical material – and the representation of change with passing time.

The project was two linked live-work dwellings beside a railway in north London, and the project was clad in cor-ten (rusting) steel, a material that manifests its own record of the effects of weather and time.

Recently, with Shizuka Mori, we completed this limited edition artists’ book which concerns the origins, process and implementation of the project and embodies some of its qualities, textures and ideas.

Stephen Chance 2009