Original subtitles

Narrator: In the six months after the new V&A Museum

in Dundee opened,

half a million people walked through its doors.

Those behind this project,

the first V&A to be built outside London,

were overwhelmed... but not surprised.

They'd felt all along that a signature building

by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma

on Dundee's waterfront

could trigger the regeneration of this city,

spoiled by insensitive development in the 1960s.

In Dundee's brave new world,

people would come here to learn more

about Scotland's design heritage

in a structure that is itself a piece of design,

a piece of art with its own story.

- What I want to do is work with the community

to respect the place and to learn something from the place.

It is a kind of conversation with the community

conversation with the place.

[rhythmic piano music]

Narrator: In Dundee, Kengo Kuma,

the architect behind Tokyo's National Stadium

for the 2020 Olympic Games,

has produced the design for the V&A that is unique,

and uniquely challenging to build,

jutting out into the River Tay alongside 'Discovery',

the polar exploration ship built in Dundee

in which Scott and Shackleton sailed the Antarctic in 1901.

'Discovery' came home to Dundee for good in 1986,

around the time Kengo Kuma first visited Scotland.

His impression of the landscape,

particularly the cliffs, stayed with him

and, 30 years later,

it would influence his design of Scotland's newest building.

This project is very unique

as it's sitting between water and city,

nature and artefact,

and this is a very, very unique location.

We tried to create the landform

between nature and city

and the cliffs give me many hint

about the shape of the building.

The cliff is showing the composition

between water and the land

and that composition

is naturally creating the soft, organic shape.

So, we tried to adapt the shape of cliff

into real building.

It's not easy process to create that kind of shape,

but finally, by using the special concrete bars,

we could achieve that kind of organic effect.

The first time I ever came to Dundee,

this site was occupied by some old buildings -

old factory buildings, old warehouse buildings -

as I couldn't see the river from the site.

But I saw the river from the bridge

and it's just so big, wide and beautiful.

And so, we thought we should integrate

that kind of beautiful river to the city.

And integration is the main theme of this project.

Narrator: The new V&A is part of a £1 billion master plan

to reconnect Dundee city centre with its waterfront,

a connection that was severed in the 1960s

by roads and other unsympathetic development.

There is much talk of Kengo Kuma's building

having the same effect in Dundee in 2018

as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim had in Bilbao in 1997.

But the challenge to turn around Scotland's fourth largest city,

beset by growing unemployment

after industry wound down in the 1980s,

is very great.

The council says it will take 30 years.

The V&A is just the start.

- Up until we had set out the waterfront master plan,

it was an area that was effectively cut off

from Dundonians because of a sort of mini motorway system

with overhead pedestrian bridges and quite brutal architecture.

So what we've done is to sweep all of that away,

put in a very simple and robust gridiron pattern of streets -

very much a European tradition -

and at it's heart we have a major green, open space,

Slessor Gardens.

We've put in a new railway station

as an entry point into the city

and what's coming next are all of the mixed use developments -

the apartments, the offices, the hotels -

that will create that buzz

and bring the whole area to life.

So, it's important that the V&A Museum

sits within that living piece of city.

[seagulls caw]

Narrator: In 2014, Dundee was made a UNESCO City of Design

after a concerted push by the council

to get the city onto the cultural map.

But it was a chance conversation that landed the V&A.

The idea for the museum came from a visit to Dundee

by Mark Jones, the then director of the V&A in South Kensington.

He'd been invited to see the work in our College of Art,

invited by the University of Dundee.

And during the day, we had an informal lunch

while he was in the city

and a few people were also invited -

I was one of the people invited to that lunch.

And over the meal, we spoke about regeneration

and the importance of the arts and culture and creativity

in regeneration,

and it was a very nice lunch and a very nice discussion.

But afterwards, I took Mark on a tour of Dundee waterfront

and he became very interested in what we were doing.

But we thought maybe that was just that,

that was the end of the day.

But afterwards, Mark said,

"Look, I'd like you to come down to London.

"I've got an idea, I think we can work together."

Narrator: The Victoria and Albert Museum

in London identified hundreds of items

that spoke of Scottish design through the ages.

These would form the basis of the new museum's exhibitions.

But the man who would take responsibility from day one

was determined that V&A Dundee

would be a hub for the artists and designers of today.

I do think it's absolutely right

that Scotland should have

a design museum.

We have an amazing creative

heritage in this country,

amongst our artists, our sculptors,

and very much with our designers.

And working on this project has been a revelation to me,

quite how extraordinary our history is in design creativity

and, through that, in entrepreneurship and innovation.

Narrator: Philip Long came here from a post

in the National Galleries of Scotland.

When he arrived in 2011,

Kengo Kuma's plans for the building were controversial,

not because of the design but because of the cost.

The new director put it back on track

by reducing the extent to which the museum

sat out in the River Tay.

- The project had great ambitions very early on

and all of the shortlisted designs

did attempt to place the building out over the river.

In 2012, the project team looked at that

and I think we recognised

quite what a challenge that would be,

so the very sensible decision was taken

to pull it back onto land.

But not completely onto land.

There's still a substantial amount of the building

that does project out into the river,

and I think that's one of the things

that makes it not only exciting to look at and to visit,

but conceptually makes it very important

because Kuma's design, vitally, reconnects Dundee the city

with Dundee's river, the River Tay.

Narrator: But the design remained the same -

two inverted pyramids with double-curved concrete walls

to which would be attached 2,500 concrete planks

of different sizes - Kengo Kuma's cliff.

[soaring string music]

Kengo Kuma was born in Yokohama in 1954,

less than 10 years after the Americans

had brought the Second World War to an end

by exploding two atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[soft, sombre music]

Elsewhere, wartime bombing

had decimated Japan's wooden buildings.

- In Japan, wood was the most important material

and we thought wood

was oldest friend of us

and the softness of this wood and intimacy of the wood

was creating our culture itself.

[sombre music continues]

In 20th century, unfortunately,

the concrete culture civilisations came to Japan

and we lost the warmness of wood.

But now the people are going back to wood.

It's happening everywhere in the world, not only in Japan.

And we are doing...

Everywhere in the world it's because people

really want to revisit nature, really want to feel nature

and wood is the best material

to give that kind of look and softness.

Narrator: Kuma's aim in Japan was to recover the place.

In the mountainous town of Yusuhara

he's returned again and again

to design a wooden bridge-shaped art gallery,

a community market, and two hotels,

as well as the town's offices.

They call this place 'the town above the clouds'

and Kuma clearly sees it as a showcase for his philosophy -

collaborate with the community and with local architects,

use natural materials,

work with the hand.

In 1990s, the...

..because of the economic crisis in Japan,

we didn't do projects in Tokyo.

So we went to the countryside and we realised

some very small projects with the craftsmen,

local craftsmen with local material.

And I learned many things from those experiences.

And after 2000, we began to work in the big cities,

we began to work in other countries,

and we tried to adapt the method we learned

from the small village in Japan to bigger scale.

But material is different, skill is different,

but the basic attitude to the place is consistent.

[slow, soft strings]

Narrator: He's experimented with exporting Japanese design -

a Japanese garden in Oregon,

a tea pavilion in Vancouver.

He is designing an aquatic centre in Copenhagen.

And of course, the Olympic Stadium.

At the National Stadium,

Kuma has not only used latticed wood on the outside,

he's brought nature inside

by putting trees and planting along the circulation spaces

on every level,

continuing a Japanese tradition

of linking landscape and interior.

Now, a Kengo Kuma design is being built in Scotland -

his first project in the UK.

A cofferdam has been built

to allow the building into the river.

The walls, precast off-site, are being installed,

and the builders and the engineers

have their work cut out.

- What we can see here is the beginnings

of the building emerging from the ground.

The line of the bars, the way that they twist,

shows you already how acute the walls will be

and what the overhang will be.

Dramatic, isn't it? Very dramatic site.

[rhythmic piano]

Narrator: It's not lost on Kengo Kuma or Philip Long

that the V&A in Dundee,

the home of a design museum,

is a piece of design itself.

The building is quite a remarkable one.

I think we are very proud to have a museum

which sets out its design credentials quite so clearly.

Kengo Kuma has designed us a fabulous building,

which I think invites people to think about how design works.

How do we get from the idea of what a building might be

through to its realisation?

Everything from the spaces in the museum

that are fabulously designed for showing great design,

through to how the building itself

is revealed through its structure.

I'm sure it will be of great interest

to designers and architects and engineers to come and see.

Narrator: The building is a technical challenge.

New 3D software had to be created

to render out the shape -

software that would later be used

on the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

The complex geometry of this building,

the requirement for very, very fine tolerances,

down to 1mm or 2mm in three-dimensional space,

meant that we had to use a completely different way

of setting out the building.

If you were watching the workmen working on it,

you would have thought

that they were always on their mobile phones.

They weren't on their mobile phones - that was the GPS system

to work out exactly where they were

in three-dimensional space

so they could work to that very, very fine tolerances

that the whole engineering of the building demanded.

Narrator: Philip Long says nothing in his career

really prepared him for a project of this scale,

or for showing it to famous faces.

- And where we're standing,

the sea will return right up to the front of the building.

Oh, wow!

You can really start to see what it's gonna be like

when it's finished.

And how complex it is.

Narrator: He once wanted to be an architect,

like his father before him who worked for Sir Basil Spence,

the designer of Coventry Cathedral.

The architecture is in my family's blood,

and so is naval architecture, in fact, further back.

In the end, I trained as a sculptor and as an artist

and as a designer, so I think all of these things,

I hope, has helped me be sympathetic to the process

of the complexity of the design and construction of this museum.

But I very much hope as well

that it helps me be sympathetic to all of the designers

that we now are very much looking forward to

in the museum.

The museum is showing our heritage

and it is also showing new work.

We want to work with designers to commission new works,

to give opportunities for them.

Narrator: But before Scottish designers

can display their work,

the team behind this ambitious project

has to deliver the vision of Kengo Kuma.

[seagulls caw]

The materials that will mark out the new V&A

as a building of distinction are arriving in Dundee.

It's two years before completion

and the design is testing the contractors.

- This is our first delivery of precast planks

that will be going on this sample panel.

So, each plank follows the curvature of the wall

as well, so each plank's unique.

We've got 20 different elevations

and external façade walls,

so as you're walking into the new V&A,

you'll see all this concrete

stepping in and out of the walls.

- I've been involved as an architect, a designer,

a project manager for 30 years in delivering building projects,

and this is without doubt the pinnacle of those 30 years.

And living in Dundee

and sensing the excitement and engagement of the public

with the building as it comes out of the ground

is also very exciting.

Whereas your average building is a very traditional frame,

very simple, straightforward,

the design of this has required engineering,

sculptural techniques

that are traditional in that it's concrete in its formwork,

but to actually build that structure in its temporary state

requires very, very creative engineering.

Man: I never, ever thought I'd get the opportunity

to work on that type of building.

The complexities of it drive us every day

to stretch our imaginations.

It's just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The external walls that you see,

you see the red and yellow formwork -

all that formwork actually holds up the structure

until all the floors are in place and the roof's in place.

And once the roof's in place, the structure itself takes over.

Following on from that, the precast panel planks

that are gonna be positioned on the external elevations

will start to appear

and people will then see the design concept come to life.

Narrator: And all the while, Kengo Kuma is flying in

to keep an eye on his first project in Britain.

Mike Galloway: Working with Kuma-san

has been really uplifting,

because he's very much against star architecture,

but he is obviously now a very, very well-known name.

And he brought an attitude to the building

which was very much about setting it in its place,

so it's not just here to be some kind of iconic landmark -

it has meaning in its place.

And also, we found that, as with any building project,

there are always problems that crop up with the design

and he always took a problem and improved the building

in resolving that problem.

I don't think I've ever seen any architect consistently do that

on a project that certainly I've been involved in.

Narrator: It's taken four years,

it's challenged the people who built it,

all those walls on a slope.

But most of all, the way it juts out into the River Tay,

less than originally intended but still prominent,

all achieved by holding back the water

in that specially-built dam.

Finally, away comes the cofferdam

and Kengo Kuma's design is revealed.

It's a long way from the wooden buildings of Yusuhara.

I think that, you know, some of his earlier projects

are like little jewel boxes,

but I think that's where he honed his craft

in terms of materiality

and I think, you know, this building,

as large as it is, has...

A lot of its appeal is about the use of materials,

particularly natural materials.

The exterior of the building, if you said to people,

"Well, it's a concrete building" -

that's not the way they perceive the building at all.

It's using that material in a way

which is perhaps unexpected and really impressive.

[uplifting string music]

Narrator: As you might expect from a museum team,

the story of the V&A in Dundee was carefully curated.

The exterior of the building

was there for all to see emerging on the waterfront,

but the interior remained a secret

right up to the day it was opened.

It's opening week.

Kengo Kuma is here and it's press day.

The world will see at last

the interior of the V&A Dundee.

[sweeping orchestral music]

It's been remarkable working with Kengo Kuma.

I think his sensitivities

to what the requirements of a museum are in the 21st century

are really remarkable

and are becoming clearer to us every day.

It's so thoughtful to how visitors

might like to experience a museum.

As one walks into it, it seems to unfold in front of you

and you seem to slow down as you look around it

and up through it,

through the windows that are provided throughout the space

that gives you fantastic views across the city.

Kengo Kuma seems to be brilliant at making an architecture

which interplays, if you like,

with the surroundings roundabout.

That's very important for the site here

and, as a curator of a museum

that makes spaces that are absolutely right

for showing objects in, that works brilliantly too.

Narrator: Here are Kengo Kuma's trademarks.

The use of natural materials.

Fins, this time in oak.

The editing of light.

Views over the water.

And the idea that it is possible in a masonry building

to achieve a certain lightness.

We did use this beautiful oak as a wall, as...[stumbling],

and also we tried to find a unique solution

for fixing the wooden panels to the wall.

And we tried to create a kind of randomness,

and randomness is very important for nature.

[rhythmic flute music]

And we tried to go beyond the geometry of the building.

The normal museum has a... has a cut

exterior and interior,

but this museum, we tried to create connection

between exterior and interior.

- Kengo Kuma was really keen that the wood panel

relates to one's own body and to that sense of scale

which anybody can understand and anybody can really enjoy,

so it's a building which unfolds for you

as you walk into the museum

and it unpacks for you.

So as a visitor, that you don't feel intimidated,

you feel welcomed and you can chart your own path,

which I think is a really exciting prospect

for anybody coming into this museum.

Narrator: In his work, Kengo Kuma

has always attached importance to the void -

in this case, the central exhibition space -

and to that very Chinese and Japanese concept, Zen.

- The void is a very important concept for Japanese building

and it is very much related with Zen.

Zen creates a special atmosphere

where people can feel a sense of nature

and void is the best solution for that kind of space.

The big foyer is a good example of void

and those...the space between two blocks,

that void in the centre of the building,

is to connect the nature and human.

[rhythmic string music]

- I think the building that Kengo Kuma has given the city

is a wonderful living room for the city,

and he means that in the most fundamental sense.

That living room for the city,

we are standing in the main hall now,

we are surrounded by warm wood panelling,

which is a wonderful invitation to a different kind of museum,

which is a museum for everybody to enjoy.

And that warm welcome to the world of design

is something that has infiltrated

every part of the programme that we do.

So, yes, we have a wonderful opening exhibition

on ocean liners,

but we also have permanent collection galleries

telling the story of Scottish design

for the very first time,

project spaces, a designer in residence.

We've got lots of workshops, talks, events.

We've got really something for everybody.

Narrator: When Kengo Kuma first saw Scotland 30 years ago,

he was fascinated by the scenery,

but he also wanted to see the buildings designed

by the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh,

especially the Glasgow School of Art.

Fast forward 30 years and,

three months before the opening of the V&A in Dundee,

Mackintosh's landmark building

has been destroyed by fire for the second time.

Mackintosh looms large in the new V&A.

The famous tea room interiors he designed from Miss Cranston

have been taken out of storage and installed here -

a poignant tribute

to one of Scotland's most acclaimed designers.

If you were to ask me what I'm most proud of

in this overall development,

it's certainly the museum, the new institution,

the team that's come into place to develop it.

But I think I am especially proud

of the conservation and restoration

of this original tearoom by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

It was designed by him for Miss Cranston

at the height of Mackintosh's powers, in 1907,

operated as a tearoom to the 1950s,

and then in 1970, it was pulled out of its original building

and taken into storage.

When we set about developing our design history galleries here,

we wanted to represent Mackintosh

in a very special way,

so we've worked hard with colleagues in Glasgow

and with the city council here

to bring back to life this original tearoom interior

that people can now see after some 50 years.

The tearoom is right at the heart

of the Scottish design galleries

and is really right at the heart of the museum.

Kengo Kuma came 30 years ago to Scotland

looking at Mackintosh buildings,

because he was interested in the avant-garde nature

of Mackintosh's work,

but also that really warm welcome

that he gives to people when you walk into those spaces.

I defy anybody not to be absolutely bowled over

when they walk into the Ingram Street tearoom,

which is the tearoom that we have

right at the centre of the building.

We've worked in partnership with Glasgow Life

and Dundee City Council

to realise this extraordinary interior,

which will be a total surprise for visitors

when they come to the museum.

We are a brand-new museum.

We've got a lot to learn

and we've got the perfect building

and perfect framework within which to do that.

[soft music]

I've worked on many interesting projects,

but this has to really top everything.

I think to be part of a brand-new,

21st-century design museum is the most exciting prospect,

and a museum which really defines the way

that objects are displayed, conversations are had

and the way people enjoy and encounter design

within a any museum context.

It can't get better than this.

Narrator: From Charles Rennie Mackintosh

to the Scottish designers of our time,

this is a new showcase.

A showcase that is instantly attractive

not only to Dundonians,

but also to people from all over Scotland

who come for the opening celebrations

and then keep on coming...

and coming.

500,000 in the first six months.

[singing fades, cheering]

Lewis Capaldi: Thank you all so much.

Narrator: They include the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The Duchess has just become patron of the V&A.

Now Kengo Kuma's design gets Royal approval.

I have been amazed by the breathtaking architecture

and the sheer range of design on display.

But most of all, I've been moved by the passion

of the people who work here

and the dedication of all those

who've helped make this important project succeed.

I'm pleased to declare V&A Dundee officially open.

[applause]

Narrator: It was to have cost £45 million.

It ended up costing £80 million.

But those involved say the value of the V&A to Dundee

is incalculable.

[seagulls caw]

Will it become as famous

as Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art?

Will it do for Dundee

what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim did for Bilbao?

Only time will tell.

A building is nothing until it comes alive,

and it's how people interact with that building

and how that building influences their behaviour

and their mood and their futures.

So, I've got great, great hopes for this building,

in terms of what it will do for the importance of design

in Dundee, design in Scotland

and design to every person that comes into the building.

They need to understand

that everyone, in a way, is a designer.

[soft, sweeping music]

Narrator: Next time...

In New York, one of the biggest developments

in the country's history

has chosen Thomas Heatherwick to design its centrepiece.

Inspired by the stepwells of India,

the Vessel has been built in Italy,

shipped across the Atlantic

and erected on Manhattan's West Side.

It's cost $150 million,

it's been a hit with the selfie generation,

and it goes nowhere.

In a sense, we tried to be very idealistic and think,

"What's the best thing

"that we really think should happen here?"

In the development team's mind originally

was that there would be a sculpture.

Of course, identity is done with a sculpture

and in the studio, we've been interested in trying

to break down the idea that there's a functional world

and then there's culture

and that they're two separate things

and that aesthetics and function are two separate things.

To us, how a place makes you feel is its function.

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