Last month we shared with you the six designs from the shortlisted group for the future Victoria & Albert Museum in Scotland:
Delugan Meissl Associated Architects / Kengo Kuma & Associates / REX / Snøhetta / Steven Holl Architects / Sutherland Hussey Architects
The six designs are now on exhibition at the library of Abertay University on Bell Street in Dundee until November 4th.
We now have more photographs and a short description of each proposal plus a video after the break.
REX proposal
“Despite an increased need to accommodate change, contemporary design still relies on an antiquated version of flexibility: one size fits all. The ultimate result of this simplification, however, is each program competing for survival in an unresponsive building. Holding program clusters distinct and addressing potential evolutions on individual terms allows each cluster’s design to develop and subsequently evolve after building completion without sacrificing the capabilities of any other. The V&A at Dundee’s program can be clearly divided into four groups: by retaining a level of autonomy between these program types, a malleable organisation can be formed, robust enough to accept stakeholder feedback during design and beyond without jeopardizing the building’s overall coherence and beauty. ‘The Bluebell’ takes these responses as the catalysts to its design strategy.”
Delugan Meissl Associated Architects proposal
“A soft, gentle rise forms from the artificially created grounds of the new structure’s topographical foundation before it transitions counter-inclined into the bordering shoreline. At this location the Museum forms a topographical and structural continuation of the waterfront landscape between the urban fabric and the Firth of Tay. Positioning and creative design of the location transform the building far beyond its actually intended use into an urban stage which, due to its open, extroverted character becomes a high quality meeting place for visitors, and more – a viewing station toward the town and its surroundings. Raised off the ground yet centrally anchored, the spectacular structural body balanced upon its formidable base creates a powerful aesthetic value with its tensions between balance and movement.”
Kengo Kuma & Associates proposal
“The museum itself with its big and open public hall will be part of the new system of public spaces, becoming a sort of covered public square where people can go and enjoy the warm feeling of this welcoming space, just for shopping at the museum store, or for going to dinner at the restaurant or to have a drink at the cafe, as it happens in any successful vital public square. This creates a strong integration between outside and inside the museum, creating an offer which will be direct not only to all the visitors the museum will attract form outside Dundee, but also to Dundee’s citizens, which will be able to appreciate the museum spaces as really part of their city and will be invited to live it as such.”
Snøhetta proposal
“Our museum is designed to engage with the light of the river, the dynamic of the river and with the energy of the river. Our design seeks to exploit and heighten the experience of this unique river setting by creating a direct relationship between the ‘building’ and the movement, flow and surface of the water as it changes throughout the course of a day. Rather than a fixed pier or landfill outcrop that ‘landlocks’ the Discovery, our design sits directly into the water, floating on the very surface of the river – the perfect, designed container of the museum creating a new public place and destination on the river that continually rises and falls in rhythm with the Tay’s tidal change.”
Steven Holl Architects proposal
“Subtractive part – the foreground of the site restored harbour in stone. Additive part – very light The heavy and the light. Floating over its own reflection in the River Tay the new form levitates alive and is fused with the changes in the river water & weather changes. Inner spaces around a cascade of light are promising like a blank page about futures to be creatively fabricated… At night the building casts a white shadow on the Tay. A floating image, it measures time by how the building body shimmers with the passing river’s rushing water. Transformed by the river, it is a gossamer architecture in rivery air… Suspended in ripples of sparkling light.”
Sutherland Hussey Architects proposal
“Our design proposal locates the Museum as a ‘Crannog’ – literally an artificial island sitting in the water. Scotland has a rich history of such constructions dating back some 5,000 years. They were traditionally constructed as timber-built roundhouses supported on piles or stilts driven into the loch-bed and connected back to the mainland via timber bridges. The same ideas apply to our proposal on a grand scale. A clear, simple form, monumental in scale yet compact in plan and connected back to the mainland by a large ramped bridge. There are other references that can be made – comparisons to Scottish castles, lighthouses, Dundee’s industrial past, shipbuilding structures – strong and simple forms resilient in their exposed location.”
Pictures and proposal descriptions from V&A at Dundee
