Nottingham Contemporary
2004–2009
Location: Nottingham, UK
Client: Nottingham City Council
Project Status: Built
Caruso St John were selected to design Nottingham’s new Centre for Contemporary Art through an international competition in 2004.
The artistic ambition of the project, encompassing object based visual art and time based performance art, has its origins in the artist run spaces of down town New York in the late 1960s, and in the work of artists like Gordon Matta Clark and Trisha Brown, whose work was directly engaged with the spaces of the city. The site for the new building is in a part of central Nottingham called the Lace Market, whose history and built form has parallels with the cast iron district of New York, giving the Centre a loose cultural connection to its site. In our design, we set out to offer a wide range of interiors that will have the variety and specificity of the found spaces of a factory or warehouse, within a new building: rooms that will challenge the installation and production of contemporary art and offer new ways for performers and audiences to interact.
The exterior of the Centre takes its inspiration from the amazing 19th century buildings of Nottingham, and in particular, from the impressive façades of the Lace Market.