- 01 V&A MUSEUM + RRS 'DISCOVERY' DUNDEE
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London is said to be the world's largest museum of applied and decorative arts and design. Founded in 1852, it's one of several major institutions funded by the Great Exhibition of 1851. The V&A Dundee designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was completed in 2018. The Royal Research Ship "Discovery" was launched in Dundee in1901 and its associated museum building dates from c1993.
- 02 V&A MUSEUM
This is the first UK building designed by Kengo Kuma. His designs reflect their locations' culture and traditions in architecture, design, materials and craftsmanship. Timber often has a central structural and aesthetic role such as in the Odunpazari Modern Museum in Turkey, a contemporary of the V&A Dundee. Both illustrate the influences of their environment and climate.
- 03 V&A MUSEUM
The planform combines two offset contacting inverted pyramidal forms set within curved edge pools. A walkway arch leads from the street under the junction of them to the promenade overlooking the River Tay. Design inspiration of that and the stacked horizontal concrete slabs came from exploratory drawings and images of the high and heavily weathered sandstone cliffs of the east coast, particularly the Orkney Islands some 170 miles north.
- 04 DISCOVERY | History 1
'Discovery' is a three-mast wooden barque constructed in the city in 1901. It was specifically designed and equipped to carry the British Antarctic Expedition led by Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first voyage south. Its heavily built hull was designed to withstand pressures exerted by solid winter ice. Fitted with a 450 horsepower triple expansion steam engine its small coal capacity gave a limited 7,000 mile range at 6 knots.
- 05 DISCOVERY | History 2
1901: Voyage south to New Zealand and beyond +1902>1904: winter quarters in the Antarctic ice + 1905>1922: commercial trading + 1923: acquired by the Royal Navy and refitted for research + 1925>1927 British Oceanographic Research Expedition to Antarctica +1929>1931 last voyage south before mooring in London as RN Reserve and Sea Scouts ship +1979: acquired by the Maritime Trust + 1986: returned to Dundee.
- 06 DISCOVERY | History 3
Much restoration of its original structure and equipment has been completed since its return to Dundee. It was installed in this dry dock at Museum Point in 1993. The museum building was designed by Scottish architect James Gillespie.
- 07 V&A MUSEUM
The first three images show the westerly façade and one of its prow-like profiles. The pool edging leads to the recessed entrance doors. The remaining exterior photographs record a clockwise walk to the waterfront and return under the building to emerge at the V & A sign.
- 08 V&A MUSEUM | Entrance
The underlying structure is black finished cast concrete suggesting rather different steel. Metal brackets carry the stylised layers of concrete geology. The narrow cave-like entrance leads into a large volume described by the architect as a "living room for the city". It's a space large enough to house performances, conferences and similar as well as everyday café, shop and simple socialising. A restaurant with broad upriver views towards the railway bridge is set on the first floor.
- 09 V&A MUSEUM | Interior stairway and lift shaft detail
This image shows a detail from the steel stairs structure set against the oak veneered boards lining the space. A fragment of the translucent lift shaft casing is angled into the composition. The small windows admit limited light but few views. Black fossilised coral limestone from Carlow in south-east Ireland covers the floor.
- 10 V&A MUSEUM | Stairway abstraction
Here, the glass balustrades and the staircase steels are more conventionally set into the composition but I was more interested in the inherent reflective and abstract qualities of the image and the random window placing. The wood boards echo the geological strata theme of the exterior.
- 11 V&A MUSEUM | Under the link between the two buildings
The large window lights the first floor open space leading to the galleries displaying the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. On my first visit I saw the memorable opening "Ocean Liners" exhibition transferred from London. The dark triangle below frames the walkway under the building.
- 12 V&A MUSEUM | Perspective across the northern facades
A little further on, a recessed entrance leads to non-public spaces.
- 13 V&A MUSEUM | Detail
This opening also leads to non-public parts of the building.
- 14 V&A MUSEUM | A waterfront perspective
This view of the riverside façade does suggest the geology of the cliffs that attracted the architect as a design theme. Stylised, there is still a sense of the creation of arches, caves and fissures by wave forces and atmospheric weathering.
- 15 V&A MUSEUM | Cladding detail with the Tay Railway Bridge beyond
Here, the riverside path curves to pass under the building. Beyond is a detail from the second Tay Rail Bridge completed in 1887. Also visible are pier stumps from the first and the world's then longest, opened in 1878. During a severe winter storm the following year a long section collapsed taking a train with some 70 passengers and crew into the river.
- 16 V&A MUSEUM | Detail
- 17 V&A MUSEUM | Detail
- 18 V&A MUSEUM | View east through the arch under the building
The view frames part of the road bridge across the Tay completed in 1966 to replace the ferry service linking Dundee to Newport on the Fife coast.