V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first design museum

Dundee's V&A Museum of Design will open on 15 September 2018, it has been confirmed.

The museum will feature free-to-enter galleries housing over 300 exhibits drawn from the V&A’s archives, various museums and private collections.

The opening exhibition, titled Ocean Liners: Speed & Style, which will "re-imagine the golden age of ocean travel". It will also feature Charles Rennie Mackintosh's fully-restored oak-paneled room originally designed for a Glasgow tearoom in 1907.

V&A Dundee was designed by the Japanese architects Kengo Kuma and associates following an international competition, and is Kuma’s first building in the UK. Kuma’s vision for V&A Dundee is that it will be a welcoming space for everyone to visit, enjoy and socialise in – a 'living room for the city' – and a way of reconnecting the city to its historic River Tay waterfront.

Curving concrete walls (there are no straight external walls) hold 2,500 pre-cast rough stone panels, weighing up to 3000 kg each and spanning up to 4m wide, to create the appearance of a Scottish cliff face. There are 21 separate wall sections. V&A Dundee is an impressive 8,000m² building, with 1,650m² of gallery space.

Beyond its curved walls, V&A Dundee is reconnecting the city with its beautiful and historic riverside. The museum is at the heart of a £1 billion waterfront transformation, an ambitious 30-year project that is propelling the city towards an improved future.