Jute, jam and jaw-dropping ...welcome to V&A
PARIS has its Pompidou, Bilbao its Guggenheim and now, at last, Dundee has its V&A.
With its instantly recognisable outline – part sea cliff, part galleon – the £80million V&A Museum of Design may soon find itself similarly regarded as a global design icon.
Certainly, few who have seen Scotland’s first dedicated design museum are likely to be left unmoved by its dizzyingly ambitious zigzag slabs of rough concrete, described variously as a crash-landed Egyptian pyramid, the ribbed carcass of a beached whale and the ragged remains of a mighty shipwreck.
Following its official opening this weekend, the ‘V&Tay’ as it is apparently affectionately known to its London colleagues, is expected to attract 500,000 visitors from around the world in its first year and generate tens of millions of pounds for the local economy.
Critics may welcome a time when this controversial project starts to pay its way, having been blown off course by years of construction delays and escalating costs before finally anchoring itself at the heart of the city’s £1billion waterfront regeneration.
Since its conception, the original £45million budget has almost doubled and its Japanese architect Kengo Kuma had been forced to tow his initial plan for a waterbound structure back to dry land.
Yesterday, however, at a preview attended by dozens of the world’s media, Mr Kuma pronounced himself satisfied that his vision to create a ‘living room for the city’ had been realised.
The attraction’s galleries showcase 300 objects, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Oak Room, the painstakingly reconstructed interior of Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street tearoom which has been not been seen for 50 years.
Mr Kuma said: ‘It is fitting that the restored Oak Room by Charles Rennie Mackintosh is at the heart of this building as I have greatly admired his designs since I was a student.
‘In the Oak Room, people will feel his sensibility and respect for nature, and hopefully connect it with our design for V&A Dundee. I hope the museum can change the city and become its centre of gravity.’
He said the magisterial lightfilled atrium with its sweeping staircase and waves of oak panel boards was a nod to Mackintosh, who was deeply influenced by oriental art and design.
Mr Kuma said: ‘When I saw [Mackintosh’s] buildings as a student I was very surprised at how Japanese they were. Japanese quality, Japanese sensitivity exist in his designs.’
Everywhere in the museum, glimpses of the Tay can be caught through small windows, while the hall and stairs glint with fossilised coral set into limestone flooring.
Complementing his daring design are the – often quirky – exhibits of the Scottish Design Galleries, from the so-called Valkyrie tiara, created by Cartier using more than 2,500 diamonds for Mary CreweMilnes, Duchess of Roxburghe, in 1935, to cutting-edge environmental material crafted from the fibres of stinging nettles by Dundee-
‘Tremendous sense of pride’
based firm Halley Stevensons for Glasgow backpack-maker Trakke.
There is also some hand-coloured Beano artwork for a Dennis the Menace cartoon strip from 1960.
Also in the collection is the largest remaining fragment of the Titanic – part of a door from the first-class lounge of the liner – and a costume worn by Natalie Portman’s character, Padmé Amidala, in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, which was created by Trisha Biggar, the Glasgow designer.
A full-sized clay model Jaguar car sits between the entrances to the permanent collection and the opening touring show, Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, which tells the story of Scotland’s role in the golden age of cruise liners.
V&A Dundee’s director, Philip Long, said ‘it was with some emotion’ that he was finally able to unveil the museum and that the challenges that beset the huge project had been overcome, more than a decade after it was originally proposed.
V&A director Tristram Hunt said Ocean Liners: Speed and Style could ‘not be a more appropriate inaugural exhibition for Mr Kuma’s amphibious, semi-nautical, wonderful museum that is so successfully reconnecting the city with its historic waterfront’.
Dundee City Council leader John Alexander told guests invited to the first viewing of the museum that he felt a ‘tremendous sense of pride’ in the building.
He said: ‘There’s a fire in the belly of Dundonians that wasn’t there ten years ago. Dundee is leading the charge in cultural-led regeneration.’