Nottingham Contemporary Site 2008. Photography: David Sillitoe

Our Building

When it is completed Nottingham Contemporary will be one of the largest contemporary arts centres in the UK. It will have a total floor area of 3,000 sq metres, with four large galleries, education rooms, a study and resource centre, a café-bar and a shop. Rising two storeys in the middle of the building, there will be a striking performance space where many events will be staged.

The innovative architecture reflects the creative reconciliation of old and new that characterises leading European cities. Nottingham Contemporary will be an iconic building on the city’s oldest site, connecting the cherished Lace Market to the remodelled city centre.

The architects Caruso St John were influenced by the New York and Berlin warehouses that artists used as flexible “found” space. Inspiration also came from the warehouses of Nottingham’s own Lace Market where beautiful late Victorian industrial buildings housed the lace manufacture that brought Nottingham worldwide fame and fortune.

The building will be clad with panels embossed with a giant lace patterm, some up to 11 metres high. An urban garden set amongst the skylights on the roof will provide a roost for a rare bird species that is drawn to our site.

Caruso St John have also designed the Gagosian Gallery in Kings Cross, and The New Art Gallery Walsall, as well as renovating the Museum of Childhood in London’s Bethnal Green.

Nottingham Contemporary is being built by SOL Construction, a company with strong local roots. The lace-embossed panels, made with the aid of a revolutionary mould-making technique developed at the University of Derby, were created in Nottingham by Trent Concrete.