In the company of friends: this is not a ubiquitous art space. Closer in nature to the Englishness of the Soane Museum and Kettle's Yard, Sandy Wilson and Kentish & Long have created a gallery that serves Modernism's Other Tradition.

It is rare for a new building so confidently to assert a sense of 'just rightness' after such a short period of bedding in. It is even rarer for a single building so thoroughly to resonate with intellectual, contextual and cultural significance. The building in question is neither a clever container, nor a beautifully made dumb box, nor a new civic icon predictably objectified and composed to provoke the so-called Bilbao effect ... in Chichester. Instead, it is a relatively modest extension, specifically shaped and expertly inserted within a sensitive Georgian context, built to increase capacity for and accessibility to one of Britain's most admired and unique collections of Modern art. It is also considered by some to be the fitting culmination of one of Britain's most enduring architectural and curatorial careers: that of 84 year old Sandy Wilson (Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson), who came out of his working retirement to collaborate on this building with his architect wife, M.J. Long, and her practice partner Rolfe Kentish.

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Originally built in 1712 as a private residence, Pallant House has been home to a growing collection of Modern art since 1982, following an interim use as council offices from 1919. As a condition of the offer made by the collection's first benefactor--the Dean of Chichester, Walter Hussey--the unique and quintessentially English character of the gallery was quickly established: simultaneously celebrating cultural patronage and the notion of making people feel at home with Modern art. Hussey's audacious assertion that Modern art, not local councillors, would be a far more suitable occupant of the house's fine historic interiors, soon won the support of other influential individuals, such as Elisabeth Murray, and following a brief period of restoration, the grade I listed Queen Anne town house soon began to attract more gifts. Other significant collections were given by donors such as Charles Kearley and John Birch, in response one suspects to the gallery's ability to exhibit the work in the manner in which it had originally been collected, ie, in domestically scaled idiosyncratic and highly personalised internal rooms. Generating and inspiring such generous philanthropy--to borrow Wilson's own phrase--the collection soon began to collect itself, and when Wilson and Long decided to donate more than 400 of their own pieces, it became clear that a more ambitious vision was required for the sustained future of Pallant House, a vision that would surpass earlier options simply to extend the galleries into the rear garden.

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Having worked on earlier proposals, Wilson and Long & Kentish were clearly the most suited architects for the job, not only building on Wilson's extensive experience, but also on Long & Kentish's unique expertise in designing naturally lit spaces, having worked for many years configuring studios for some of the world's most well known artists. When the Heritage Lottery Fund asked the newly appointed director, Stefan van Raay, to invite five teams to pitch for the job, Wilson and Long & Kentish demonstrated by far the most thorough understanding of the context, culture and philosophy of the collection. They were commissioned on merit as well as association, bolstering the gallery's ability to extend and sustain the richness of its own genius loci.

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Having acquired the adjacent office building, sufficient area was available to extend gallery space six-fold within an L-shaped insertion that neatly arranged the required facilities, while also providing essential accessibility throughout the original house. By removing the 1930s mock Georgian offices (despite nonsensical opposition from the Georgian Society), a strategy emerged that not only rationalised the internal organisation, but also provided the opportunity to make a significant contribution to Chichester's townscape in three ways: restoring the rightful dominance of Pallant House by setting the (controversial) principal entrance elevation behind a newly revealed and quoined corner; creating a new courtyard on axis with the house, discreetly located behind the listed garden wall on East Pallant; and, perhaps most charmingly, by creating a series of loosely arranged volumes to the east that extend the city's higgledy-piggledy disposition of masonry walls, punched-out windows and opposing pitched roofs.

Through the choice of materials and the execution of detail, the building's exterior is characteristically well mannered. On the principal facade, Sussex brick in a Flemish bond frames inlaid glazed terracotta, which recedes deeper still as a ribbed screen wall returns to form a generous sheltered porch. Terracotta is also used to clad the stair well that joins new masonry with old, and on the rear facades a simpler brick bond is used to frame white lime-render that appears through punched holes and that extends across re-entrant courtyard walls.

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Internally, the arrangement also reveals many well-known motifs in plan, as the spaces step in echelon--with subtle indents, sinuous curves and chamfers. The L-shaped wing culminates in an untempered and fully glazed loggia, on axis with Pallant House's fine chandeliered stairway. Programmatically the new wing creates three distinct environments: the ground floor is open, naturally ventilated and publicly accessible; the upper floor provides eight individual and fully conditioned galleries; and the space between forms an understated point of transition, with an interstitial landing gallery and lift that provide level access to Pallant House.

In conversation with Wilson and Long, it is clear that their attitude to how art should be hung--the utility of any art gallery--is deeply rooted in permanence. Too many contemporary galleries have flexible partitions that, in Wilson's opinion, can have the effect of reducing works of art to little more than travel posters. At Pallant House, therefore, each room is robust and made unique through its scale, proportion and disposition, and in how daylight is introduced to the space, with an Aalto reference here and homage to Berlage there.

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The principal elevation remains by far the most contentious element of the new extension, recalling the crudity (at worst) and stolid formal directness (at best) of the British Library (AR June 1998). Whether people actually like it will remain a matter of conjecture, and of little or no consequence to those who understand the legacy of one of Britain's most admired and respected (if at times frustrated) architects. As an emblem of over 60 years' work--both in terms of his contribution to the theory and practice of art and architecture--this building unmistakably bears Wilson's hand, and as such is one that Chichester should be extremely proud of. Indeed, having already been heralded as one of the most significant private collections outside the capital, the building and its contents have already helped create a place of national significance, celebrating the very best of British Modern art and encapsulating in miniature the preoccupations of one of British architecture's most enduring and committed cultural figures.

Nine years in the making, with delays in planning and minor delays in realisation, the construction of Pallant House could have been an unwelcome miniature re-run of the legendary British Library saga. As it happens, the royal opening last month was perfectly timed, following as it did the city's recent announcement of a shortlist to select an architect to design the new Chichester District Museum. With Wilson and Long & Kentish having fought the battle on their behalf, rising victoriously within an extremely conservative community overpopulated by retired QCs and busybodies, the completion of this sophisticated Modern building should certainly have helped create a more positive situation for the city's next cultural institution. By association therefore, the short-listed architects--Caruso St John, Jamie Fobert, Keith Williams, Panter Hudspith, Tony Fretton, and van Heyningen and Haward--should benefit from this exemplary building.

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Fortunately one suspects that most of them would be happy to follow on in a similar vein, as would be the tendency for any British architect who consciously rejected British High-Tech--born from Hitchcock and Johnson--in favour of what Wilson described as The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture (Academy Editions, 1995). Whether these architects read Wilson's book or not, it is unimaginable that they will not share his sympathy for Aalto, Asplund, Lewerentz, Scharoun, Haring, and Berlage. Many of them, you suspect, would also find it difficult to deny any influence of Wilson on their own formation as architects, be that directly through his method of making buildings, prioritising solidity over transparency; more theoretically given how his Architectural Reflections tried to remove the wedge driven between art and utility; or indeed, more personally, in reviewing how he allowed himself and his architecture to be inspired and influenced by great Modern art. Chichester may get not one but potentially two brilliant new cultural buildings, and is set to be a significant cultural destination, through its patronage of the arts and of first-rate contemporary architecture.

www.pallant.org.uk

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