Hasta La Ideas

The V&A museum has released a movie and photographs showing how far construction has progressed on its new Kengo Kuma-designed outpost in Dundee.

Set to become Scotland’s first design museum, the V&A Museum of Design Dundee is being built on the River Tay. It will be the only UK outpost of the successful London institution.

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma designed the building with an angular body and a facade of horizontal concrete striations. It will also boast a pointed corner that projects out over the water like the prow of a boat.

The new movie and photography show that much of the building’s concrete framework is now in place, but that the horizontal fins are yet to be installed. They also reveal the dam that had to built around the structure to keep the river water away from building work.

“It is a completely unique building,” says Mike Galloway, executive director Dundee City Council, in the film.

“I don’t think we would have been able to build this building 10 years ago, given the nature of its design, and the technology and the preciseness of the engineering require to achieve it.”

The museum is scheduled to open in summer 2018. Kuma first won a competition to design it back in 2012, but was forced to amend his design after spiralling costs saw the project almost double its original estimate, from £45 million to £80 million.

In the new film, Kuma says his aim was to translate the beauty of Scotland’s cliffs into a contemporary building.

“It’s very different from a concrete box, very different from a 20th-century museum,” he says.

“The inclination of the facade gives a different type of experience. If it is too vertical, the vertical void rejects the people – the building should invite people to the waterfront.”

He also describes the design as more than just a beautiful object. “This is not an independent building, it is part of a big urban design that can change the community,” he says.

Kengo Kuma ranked at number four on Dezeen Hot List, a guide to the most-talked-about architects, designers and institutions of 2016.

The architect’s past projects include a Shanghai tower covered in pleats of aluminium – which made it into Dezeen’s top 10 skyscrapers of 2016 – and a Chinese spa resort with pixellated stonework.

His completed projects in Europe include a music conservatory and concert hall in the south of France and a contemporary art centre with a chequered glass facade in Marseille.

Photography is by Ross Fraser McLean.

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