Katarzyna Krakowiak was invited to work with our building's architecture, material, and content in order to better understand the building which was built as an arts centre and social space.

Krakowiak, in collaboration with sound designer Ralf Meinz, explores sculpture and architecture with the use of various media, notably sound. Many of her projects question the division between private and the public, the intimate and the exposed. Inspired by function-focused Modernist architecture, and in particular Communist blocks with their industrial rubbish chutes, Krakowiak has created an installation that opens up hidden spaces within our building.

Chute dramatically alters the architecture of the space: emphasising the existing angles and physically bringing the outside, inside by revealing windows and allowing natural light and air to flow into the construction.

Krakowiak has extracted both live and recorded sounds from areas in the FACT including lift shafts, staircases, loading bays that we would normally overlook and actively soundproof, allowing them to tumble down into Gallery 2.

Chute considers the importance of sound to architecture, bringing to the fore those sounds that we are used to ignoring and repositioning them in our experience of what a building, particularly an arts centre, is and does.