Nottingham Contemporary Critical Analysis

Aura Gabriela Tache                                          ABEE2010 - K12AH2 Architectural Humanities II (SPR1 18-19)

ID: 14307709                                                                                                     Case Study Essay – Critical Analysis

                                               Structuralism and Semiotics

                           of Nottingham Contemporary Building

                                                   -Critical Analysis-

Nottingham Contemporary is one of the largest contemporary art centers of the UK, located in the Lace Market area in the heart of Nottingham city. The building was designed by the London architect Caruso St John in 2004 and was finalised and opened to the public in 2009. It came into existence due to a pressure of artistic presence and high concentration of students in the city of Nottingham. It harbors art-friendly interiors characterized by discontinuities between inside and outside: four galleries, an auditorium, an education space, a study center, a café-bar and a shop. The building unravels as a portal between road intersections, tram routes, and a dense urban center. A general meaning communicated through the construction is the reflection of the city and architectural history. The creator gives a reinterpretation of Victorian Lace Market warehouses and forwards it to the discernment of the user. It unravels “timeless formal principals”1 as Van Eyck states, whereby “enormous environmental experience cannot be combined unless we telescope the past”1.

Nottingham Contemporary crowns the oldest site of Nottingham – Garnes Hill – wearing the traces of cave dwellings, Saxon forts, old railway tracks and Medieval town halls. The construction embodies a refined showcase of historical stories and subtle symbolism through fine touches of design keeping a simplicity of the lines. One can say that Nottingham Contemporary unfolds its laced façade as the pages of a book carrying within itself meanings that can be “read” as cultural “texts” by the individuals of Nottingham community. The building beholds a rich heritage of the contextual site and folklore, therefore its meaning consists of the significance of places.

Caruso intended to create the aspect of ‘variety and specificity’ of found spaces in the interiors of the galleries in a completely new building. This encourages the viewer towards interpretation.

This essay purposes a structuralist approach towards the work of architecture, attributing pre-existent meanings to the construction in a manner specific to its context. The walls, the shapes, the pillars, and the materiality appear to speak a language well understood by its users, a dialect familiar to the community based on their culture and historical experience as Fiske called them “conventions of the socio-cultural dimension in semiotics” (Fiske, 1989). This language is the language of the city wearing the mark of the surroundings distinguished through well-defined contrasting elements. The method of structuralism is understood in general as “an attempt to apply linguistic theory to objects and activities other than language itself”2. Fredric Jameson has described structuralism as an attempt “to rethink everything through again in terms of linguistics”3. It can be stated that structuralism is concerned with the following aspects: the universal, invariant structures of thought, the underlying and common patterns of human thinking (articulated through language), the system of binary, distinctive pairs and semiotics (“sign systems”). It can be associated with the expression of social collective thinking structures and relations that are considered permanent and invariant with no prospect of being changed.^[1]

Further on, this critique deepens towards the study of the semiotics of the building of Nottingham Contemporary. Semiology is the science of signs, it concentrates on the meaning of sign system, on how one can use it in order to communicate feelings, emotions, ideas and on how the decoder can interpret it.

As Saussure’s language is not just a naming of objects, but a sign system, buildings such as Nottingham Contemporary are not just a form, a structure, but an embodiment of social expressions.

From the structuralist point of view the focus will be more on “the cognitive value of narratives, as way of dealing with the fact that in everyday human terms, the universe is not made of atoms, it's ‘made of stories’"4.

Victor Hugo’s views architecture as an incorporation of texts, as he states in his analysis of the Notre Dame: “Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race […] every human thought has its page in that vast book”5. His concern was that printing will deprive architecture of its transcendent power, viewing Architecture as the great “book of humanity”5. His intuition about the buildings’ function of carrying meanings was resumed later by Barthes: “He who moves about the city, e.g. the user of the city (what we all are), is a kind of reader who, following his obligations and his movements, appropriates fragments of the utterance…”6.

Nottingham Contemporary becomes a “narrative” of the city’s heritage and traditions, it engages fundamentally with the cultural and topographical qualities of the site, where the materials and forms are the signifier and the signified are the historical, economical references. The materials and colouring of the two blocks on the roof, covered in fluted gold anodised aluminium, makes it stand out as an element that has a saying in the urbanistic profile of Nottingham. Similarly to the view of the Dutch architect Jaap Bakema, its design is meant to make people aware of the larger environment to which they belong and in which they operate. When observed from the front the building appears like a crown against the sky, that from a semiotic point of view can mean that the Contemporary Art is a culmination of the culture.

The exterior cladding in verdigris scalloped panels with the traditional lace pattern becomes more than construction component, but a semiotic element carrying a multitude of valences, messages well understood by the citizens. It stands before the viewer as a piece of writing ready to be decoded. The lace pattern describes the tradition of the city centre: it tells the story of William Lee of Calverton who invented the knitting frame tuning the area into a flourishing lace manufacturing centre.

The linguistic model drives its roots from the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure who describes in his Course in General Linguistics (1916) the three key principles of the analysis of language. As Saussure suggests, the arbitrary nature of the “linguistic sign” turns to be a two faceted concept, two interdependent elements- “the signifier, or the word, and the signified, the idea of the object”4 so do the elements of space and form of the Nottingham become interdependent with their function and meaning.

We do not look at the object as a way of taking pleasure judging the beauty of it, but as a sign of something else, as a meaning that can be more or less collectively decoded.

From the plans’ language we can depict a semantic layering of “signifiers” and “signifies”, where the spaces that are more in contact with the compact city scenery mean exposure (the ground floor galleries have opened panels to the outside view) while the isolated ones mean intimacy. As we descend towards the basement and sub-basement floor, the space’s meaning variates into different grades of intimacy. This can be denoted from the forms and the sizes of the building, moving from wide shapes to secluded pointed edges, respectively from the Café and Bar (that can be accessed directly from Lower Yard) towards the Lobby and Performance space, ending with the most intimate space – the Dressing room. In the core of the building a mezzanine level accommodates education and office spaces. One can say as well that the meaning of the space is spoken through the positioning and relationship established with the other components of the system.

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In the beautiful elevation drawn by Caruso St John,  the essence of the material and subject are captured in a few lines through a use of mat colours denoting the structure of the design; the blocky shapes and repeating verticals take the form of a structuralist grid of alternation between levels, roofs and materials.  

In Saussure’s vision, “the language operates as system of differences”7. Nottingham Contemporary has almost a vocal resonance to the viewers. The lines materialised in the urbanistic landscape, the edges, the details that differentiate from each other through materiality, scale or functionality, turn into vivid words. The aesthetics becomes a storyteller, thus the eyes become the ears.