by Gordon Craigie

Saturday 15 September 2018 will see thousands descend on the City of Discovery for the official opening of V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first museum dedicated to design and the only V&A museum outside of London. According to its website, V&A Dundee “will provide a place of inspiration, discovery and learning through its mission to enrich lives through design. For the first time and in one place, V&A Dundee will explore Scotland’s design heritage – its past, present and future”.

V&A is the ‘brand name’ for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was originally known as the Museum of Manufactures when it was instituted in London back in 1852. The royal moniker was adopted in 1899 when Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for a new building in her last official public appearance. Today, the V&A proudly proclaims itself to be “the world’s leading museum of art and design”.

For Dundonians, the new V&A Dundee has been a long time coming. It was back in 2010 that the new museum first started to attract widespread attention when a public ‘consultation’ was held on the six shortlisted designs. Visitors to the exhibition, held in Abertay University, were invited to cast their votes on their preferred design, and the winner was… drum roll… not the magnificent building about to open on the Dundee Waterfront! Intrigued? All will be revealed…

The competition had been announced at the start of 2010, with initial submissions required by mid-February. 122 designs were submitted by architects worldwide and, over the following few months, a panel of judges whittled that list down to that final six. The designers shortlisted were:

• Steven Holl (USA)

• Sutherland Hussey (Scotland)

• Kengo Kuma (Japan)

• Delugan Meissl (Austria)

• REX (USA)

• Snøhetta (Norway)

Each architect was then required to produce detailed design concepts and models to go on public display at the Abertay University exhibition during October 2010. Visitors were invited to offer their feedback and rank the designs. The public duly chose the all-glass design submitted by New York architects REX but, during their analysis phase, the judging panel discovered that a similar building was going up elsewhere. In their determination that it was crucial for Dundee to have a truly unique building they settled on Kengo Kuma’s design as the winner.