Nottingham Contemporary

A different gallery from Walsall. It does not have a fixed collection. As a result the galleries are less specific. However, they are beautifully top-lit with more than a nod to Klas Anshelm's Malmo Konsthall. The whole building has clear references to that building: the wafer-thin threshold between gallery and city, the expansive whiteness of the spaces, continuous wooden flooring, large pitched monumental gallery, and a hiding of structural elements. Diagramatically the building is problematic. A cafe is trapped at the bottom, two stories below the foyer and facing an empty piaza trapped by a concrete flyover. Perhaps the public space before the foyer might have been a better place. The additive nature of the entrance canopy (rather than removed from the form at Walsall) would suggested a cafe space there instead.