Architect delivers an enormous ‘living room for the city for everyone to use’
If the biggest controversy in the runup to the unveiling of V&A Dundee was the decision to allow a half-built office block to loom over the city’s new museum then the biggest surprise on walking inside Kengo Kuma’s creation is how vast it appears.
The £80.1 million attraction has been winning plaudits ever since it began to take shape in the heart of the city’s waterfront. But the real wowfactor in the building the Japanese architect spent eight years working on is likely to come once visitors cross its threshold.
The main hall almost seems to resemble is a vast movie set – the kind of thing Sean Connery or Roger Moore would be careering around in a James Bond film. For many of those familiar with traditional museums in Edinburgh and Glasgow it is likely to feel almost futuristic – after dark it may even resemble a space station floating on water. But it is not far-off worlds that can be glimpsed through its windows, but views of the Tay bridges and the Fife coastline.
Mr Kuma, whose design was based on the sea cliffs in the north-east of Scotland, recalled: “When I first visited the site it was still occupied by other buildings. The city and nature were completely separated. I thought they should be integrated and that relationship is at the core of our design. A 21st century museum shouldn’t just be for art-lovers. It should be a living room for the city for everybody to use.”
Comment Brian Ferguson
As well as boasting Scotland’s biggest exhibition venue, Dundee arguably now has an event space unlike anything else in the UK. It is easy to imagine the main hall of V&A playing host to awards, fashion shows, television broadcasts and conferences that would previously have been well out of reach for the country. Dundee suddenly now a major venue for festivals and events to match anything that Edinburgh and Glasgow can offer.
V&A Dundee director Philip Long added: “V&A Dundee is a symbol of the city’s confidence. We’re very much looking forward to contributing to take its fortunes forward. The most challenging thing about has been the ambition of it. It is an extraordinary building that is attracting interest from around the world, it’s a new institution and a whole new organisation was set up to deliver it.”
City council leader John Alexander said the project had put “fire in the belly of ordinary Dundonians that was not there ten years ago.”
He added: “For too long, Dundee was seen as the poor relation compared to some of our larger, neighbouring cities. That’s no longer the case. Dundee is now leading the charge in cultural-led regeneration. They now see this museum as theirs.”
Dundee V&A’S exhibitionspaces will be all-important to matching expectations it will attract more than 350,000 visitors every year.
The Scottish Design Galleries are home to around 300 objects spanning more than 500 years - a treasure trove built around the glowing centrepiece of part of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh tea-room, re-assembled for the first time since being salvaged in the 1970s. Some of the oldest objects are among the most fascinating, including an 18th century Jacobite garter worn to express support for Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Visitors are likely to be equally drawn to the “l-limb” prosthetic hand and keyhole surgery instruments. Costumes by Alexander Mcqueen, Vivienne Westwood, Christopher Kane and Holly Fulton are other star attractions, along with John Byrne’s pop-up book created for John Mcgrath’s play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil and the work of Scottish designers Bunny Christie and Finn Ross for the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Unsung heroes honoured include Dundee-born designer Ray Petri, who worked with magazines like The Face, i-d and Arena after emigrating to Australia as a teenager, and Glasgow-born David Band, who designed record covers for Altered Images, Aztec Camera and Spandau Ballet. Scottish comic book favourites Mark Millar, Alan Grant, Cam Kennedy and Grant Morrison are also showcased.
The vast temporary exhibition space initially plays host to a celebration to the world’s great ocean liners, a fitting curtain-raiser to Dundee’s new waterfront era.