The AaltoSiilo Project
Silo Interior. 2020. © Charlotte Skene Catling
The AaltoSiilo Project
A Talk by Charlotte Skene Catling and Adam Lowe
Tuesday 8 September, 7.00pm (Registration from 6.30pm)
The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street, London EC1 and online.
Docomomo members go free. To book a member’s ticket please click here. To become a member see here.
Tickets for attendance in person and online are available here. Tickets will also be available on the door for £15.
For online attendance, please book your ticket before 18.00 on the day of the event. A link to watch the talk online will be sent to attendees before it begins.
The AaltoSiilo in Oulu, Alvar and Aino Aalto’s first industrial building, was constructed in 1931 at the limits of engineering tolerance. The walls and roof are cast-in-situ concrete of an almost impossible thinness. It has the austere dignity of a secular cathedral. Meri Toppila, a neglected suburb of Oulu, is at the northernmost edge of the Gulf of Bothnia, Finland, a place in urgent need of urban regeneration and undergoing the alarming consequences of climate change.
Struggling to find a new lease of life for this building, The City Council put the wood chip silo up for sale. In 2020 Factum Foundation and Skene Catling de la Peña purchased the silo with a view to restoring the building and transforming it into a “multi-sensory, multimedia cabinet of curiosities and performance space in Factum’s style - where the emphasis is on the mediation and transformation of ideas and information.”
Over the four years the project has developed, the Silo has become the living proof that you don’t have to demolish buildings, and the Oulu Protocol has been launched.
The Oulu Protocol proposes that buildings should first be reinvented, and where demolition is unavoidable, their concrete elements should be surgically dismantled and reused as ‘Concrete Spolia’ rather than crushed to waste. Its long-term ambition is to establish a replicable framework that can be embedded into planning legislation as a precedent that can be replicated, enabling more sustainable construction and reducing the environmental impact of concrete.
The first Spolia building, the ‘AaltoKiioski’, designed by Charlotte Skene Catling has been finished as proof of concept demonstrating the viability of the Oulu Protocol.
Their talk will follow the story of the restoration, an object lesson in how to breathe new life into old structures.
Charlotte Skene Catling is an architect and founding director of Skene Catling de la Peña, an architectural practice recognised for its research-led approach to design and its work across the intersections of architecture, art, and landscape. She has developed a distinctive methodology, which she calls ‘Geoarchaeology’, drawing meaning from context to inform the integration of contemporary architecture into historically and environmentally sensitive sites. This sensibility has shaped projects at locations including Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, 5 Hertford Street in London, the Perm World Heritage Site in Russia, and an ongoing reinvention of the Grade I*-listed St Pancras through partnerships with major UK cultural institutions.
Skene Catling de la Peña's work spans private, cultural, and commercial commissions in the United Kingdom and internationally, and has been recognised with numerous awards, including the RIBA House of the Year in 2015. The practice has designed major exhibitions for institutions such as the Royal Academy and the Antikenmuseum, Basel, and maintains a longstanding collaboration with the Madrid-based fabricator Factum Arte.
Beyond practice, Skene Catling is an active voice in architectural discourse. She has written for The Burlington Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, The Architectural Review, ARCH+, and DOMUS. In 2017, she co-launched the ArchFilmFest, a biennial architectural film festival in London. She has held teaching positions at the Royal College of Art, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the London School of Architecture, and served as an external examiner at UCL and the Barlett. She has lectured widely in the UK and abroad and served for five years on the jury of the World Architecture Festival. Skene Catling's contributions to the field have been recognized with a place among Debrett's 500 People of Influence in Architecture & Design in both 2016 and 2017, and she was the only European shortlisted for the 2016 AR Women in Architecture award.
Adam Lowe is the Director of Factum Arte and Founder of the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation. At the intersection of design, technology, and cultural heritage, Lowe leads a unique innovative multi-disciplinary workshop in Madrid. Factum Arte was established in 2001 and now has 8000 sq meters of workshop that is connected to a network of makers with diverse skills based in or around Madrid that are linked to other specialists further afield. It has a playground atmosphere that bridges traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge digital mediation to realise works for leading contemporary artists, such as Marina Abramović, Maya Lin, Shezad Dawood, Julian Schnabel, Sarah Sze, Ahmed Anghawi, Anish Kapoor and many others.
In 2009, Lowe founded the Factum Foundation to channel bespoke pioneering technologies towards the preservation of cultural heritage. His work includes the facsimile of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana, the digital reconstruction of the sacred cave of Kamukuwaká in Brazil, and the creation of a full-scale replica of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, installed in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The Foundation has worked with more than 500 institutions worldwide on the creation of facsimiles, exhibitions, and training programmes.
An internationally recognised leader in the field of design and cultural preservation, Lowe was named a Royal Designer for Industry in 2019 and received an OBE in 2025 for his outstanding contributions to the arts. His work exemplifies how digital innovation can transform both making and preserving helping to safeguarding the past for future generations.
Sectional photoshop render of the proposed completed Aaltosiilo