I recently spent a few days in Dundee. I chose Dundee for a city break for a few reasons. It seemed an interesting place, it was somewhere I had never been before, I got to travel there on the Caledonian sleeper (cross that one off the bucket list), but, the main one was that I wanted to photograph the new V&A building.
The V&A Dundee opened 2018 and is the first Victoria and Albert museum outside London. Designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, it is at the centre of a £1 billion regeneration of the Dundee waterfront. Curving concrete walls (there are no straight external walls) hold 2,500 pre-cast rough stone panels, to create the appearance of a Scottish cliff face.
I was staying at a Premier Inn about a 5 minute walk from the V&A and the RRS Discovery, next to it. This meant that it was easy to see the building at different times of day and, it turned out, in different weathers. Of the different viewpoints I was able to find, I really like the third image. The masts of Discovery and the curve of the building make it look like one massive ship.
Whilst on the outside the building is a beautiful piece of architecture, the inside is underwhelming. There just wasn't much there. More space seemed to be set aside for meeting rooms than exhibition spaces. Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Oak Room is probably the star piece (nice to see some of Mackintosh's work in Scotland that hasn't been reduced to cinders). A furniture design exhibit had all the joy of a trip to Ikea (minus the meatballs) and frankly too much room was devoted to a video installation about a dancer. Of most interest photographically was a 'colourful interactive playscape' on the ground floor. Sadly, I didn't see many people interacting with it.
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