How long does it take for contaminated land to recover from the assaults of the early industrial age? In the case of the heavy metal riddled made ground of the Silvertown flood plain the answer is too long for the limited patience of the current stampede of commercial developers, all brandishing their own particular brand of instant gratification architecture. The project challenges the default attitude to contaminated land of cap and cover and insists that land be remediated and contained on site and above ground. At the focus of an infrastructural landscape of heaps and canals, the Millennium Mills' mighty but abandoned grain silo becomes a tomb of contamination, an exposed and visible reminder of the area's past and its environmental cost. In its bank of concentrated contaminants its assets are the leftover substances and unwanted residues that could buy the time for a more considered approach to develop.
