The first ever branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opens in Dundee; its permanent exhibition focuses on Scottish design and has already been named the region's largest cultural acquisition of the 21st century. Among the special exhibits is the interior of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Oak Room, designed by him for a teahouse on Ingram Street in Glasgow (1900-1912), carefully restored and presented to the public for the first time in half a century. Three hundred permanent items came from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as from other institutions and private collections around the world. Admission to the Dundee branch, as well as to the “main” museum in London, is free.
The £ 80.11 million museum building is located on the banks of the Tay River, at its mouth near its confluence with the North Sea. Kengo Kuma's Project (
he was commissioned as a result of a competition in 2010) - part of an ambitious plan to transform the former harbor and docks into a mixed development area, giving Dundee access to the water. This billion-pound plan started in 2001 and runs for 30 years. It covers eight kilometers of coastline and an area of 240 hectares.
The task of the competition stipulated the maintenance of the visual connection between the city and the river by the project of the museum, therefore, the Kuma building at the level of the first floor is divided in two (which also divides the public and service entrances in different directions), turning into an arch framing the view of the water. In addition, the museum juts out towards Tei with a powerful protrusion almost twenty meters long. The architect also emphasized the connection with the river with a series of reservoirs around the building.
The volume in the form of two inverted pyramids, merging at the height of the second tier, is covered with horizontal concrete "layers": this image the architect drew from the rocks on the northeastern coast of Scotland. These "layers" cover nearly 2,500 façade panels of various sizes and shapes, which took about seven months to install. Their weight reaches two tons, and their length is up to four meters. The walls were originally intended to be 60 cm thick, with a very thick steel frame, but Arup's engineers were able to cut that number in half and significantly reduce steel consumption. The building envelope, including the roof, is a one-piece structure and its many “folds” make it more stable. During the work on the project, the BIM model played a key role.
The "Arch" at the base of the museum reminds of the nearby Royal Arch, built in 1844 in honor of the visit to the city of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Discovery, the ship of Antarctic explorer Robert Scott built in Dundee, is on display near the Kuma building since the early 1990s, and the new Slessor Gardens has been created nearby.
The main lobby of the museum is also sheathed in "layers" - only covered with oak plywood. Its floor and staircase are made of Carlow's blue Irish limestone, in which fossils of marine animals and plants are visible, which additionally connects the museum to the water. By the same principle, the checkout counters in museum cafes, restaurants and shops were made of white concrete with the addition of shellfish shells (obtained as waste from the local food industry or collected on the beaches). On the mezzanine floor there is a "picnic room" for school groups and visitors with families, above are halls for permanent (550 m2) and temporary (1100 m2) exhibitions, an educational center. The upper section of the museum also houses a resident designer studio, a multi-purpose auditorium and a restaurant with panoramic river views. The total area of the museum is 8445 m2.
