34 PROJECT REPORT: CULTURAL BUILDINGS
and a network of roads which “weren’t doing any favours to the city” he says, in fact they were deterring anyone from wanting to take a walk down to the river. This was a shame because the wide river estuary is “very beautiful,” he says – and despite its main function being essentially a gallery, the building has been designed to engage with its surroundings both in terms of grabbing views of it, and more literally, in its form. Having carefully explored the site, the architects “wanted to focus on the relationship between the building and the water, and trying to relate that back to the city,” says Mucciola.
A cliff facade
The central design response was the idea of emulating a Scottish cliff, complete with its horizontal striations, and water lapping against its base. Mucciola explains: “As a powerful natural element, the cliff played a strong part in the design, because the way it sits on the water is very strong but also at the same time very organic and gentle.” This has now been realised because the coffer dam built by main contractor BAM together with temporary piles and slab for cranes to sit on has been removed, allowing water to come right up to the wall. Kuma himself previously – and evocatively – described the inspiration behind the design: “The beauty of cliffs comes from the long dialogue between earth and water”. In trying to give the impression of a
rough, naturally striated rock face, the building’s cladding of metal-fixed and rough textured cast stone planks also helps to offset the overall somewhat forbidding scale of the building, giving it a more natural, organic softness. Using planks of varying length, depth, and inclination to match the contours of the facade, breaks up what could have been an overly linear result from such an approach. In addition, leaving a gap between each of these angled planks not only provides a space for windows to be hidden in, it also allows uneven shadows to fall on the dark pigmented reinforced concrete walls and create a further semblance of a cliff face’s randomness. Says Mucciola, “Scottish cities have a great tradition of using local stone and each city is characterised by its use of local stone.” Although quarrying around Dundee is long past being able to provide the capac- ity this project needed (about 2,300 planks) the stone aggregate with its exposed rough texture was chosen to blend with local stone. The architects worked with the subcontractor to develop flexible moulds so
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK ADF OCTOBER 2017
© Ross Fraser McLean
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