The V&A Dundee is Scotland’s first ever dedicated design museum and the only design museum to be built in the UK outside of London.
Created by renowned architect, Kengo Kuma, as a ‘living room for the city’, the museum was designed to contribute to a global understanding of design and how it touches everyone’s lives. Whether provocative, ingenious or simply breathtaking, design creativity is here to be discovered.
V&A Dundee was established in close partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, drawing on its world-class collections of art, design and performance across 5,000 years of human ingenuity.
The museum was created following an international competition and the building itself is testament to great design. When Japanese architectural practice Kengo Kuma & Associates was unanimously selected to create V&A in Dundee in 2010, the challenge was not only to create an inspirational home for a new V&A but also a building that would reconnect Dundee to the River Tay and to its maritime history.
V&A Dundee is a unique and complex structure with exterior walls which twist both horizontally and vertically, creating shapes like waves or the hull of a ship. Scotland’s sea-cliffs inspired the form of the museum, its dramatic lines creating patterns and shadows which change with the weather, the light and time of day.
An archway through the centre of the museum frames views to the river and city, echoing a commemorative historic arch which a was built nearby to welcome Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Dundee in 1844.
The V&A Dundee is dedicated to telling the yet little-known stories of Scottish design and its impact around the world. The Scottish Design Galleries explore Scotland’s design landscape, historically and today. Ranging from architecture to fashion, healthcare to furniture and engineering to video game design, around 300 exhibits have been drawn from the V&A’s world-famous collections of art, design and performance. These have been brought together for the first time, alongside objects generously lent from other museums, private collections and designers across Scotland and around the world.
The V&A is open from 10:00 to 17:00 daily (except the 25th and 26th of December). Admission is free but a paid ticket is required for some of the events and temporary exhibitions.
SOURCES:
- V&A Dundee Museum Guide
- https://www.dundeewaterfront.com/zones/central/VandA
