Culture club - Contemporary Arts Center, Dundee, Scotland

Architectural Review, The, August, 1999 by Peter Wilson

Designed to nurture both artistic and social interaction, Dundee's new Arts Centre explores themes of spatial and material layering to create a complex internal realm.

The new Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, a major new civic building in the city, is part of a drive to regenerate the city centre. An architectural competition was held in 1996, and seven practices from Scotland and England were invited to participate. It was won by Richard Murphy Architects.

The site is overlooked by the large bulk of the nearby Queen's Hotel. There was a disused garage there already - an L-shaped brick warehouse - and a more recent building connecting this to the Perth Road. From the outset, it was intended that the warehouse be retained.

The site was scarcely ideal. The street frontage to the Perth Road is extremely narrow and the resulting configuration very deep, necessitating a design that pulls people into the heart of the building. Another disadvantage is topography; the site falls by eight metres between Perth Road and disused railway yards to the south. So there are two storeys on the Perth Road, growing into five storeys on the other boundary. Two entrances were required; a main pedestrian one from the Perth Road and car park access from the disused marshalling yards. An additional constraint was the need to preserve natural light to the neighbouring cathedral's west elevation windows.

The brief was wide ranging and complex. The main public spaces consist of two galleries for travelling contemporary shows, two cinemas (with capacities for 200 and 80), the relocated printmakers' workshop (formerly in the Seagate), with a cafe bar, shop and information centre. In addition, there are public meeting rooms and activity rooms for children. Another major component is a university facility, based around an experimental gallery for visiting artists. The new building also houses Dundee City Council's arts and heritage department.

Murphy's design organizes the various public functions around a social space, with the aim of nurturing interaction between activities. The cafe bar is positioned at the internal corner of the site, forming a pivot round which the major spaces were arranged. Galleries are on the top floor of the original brick warehouse, in tall rooms with a crisply modelled roof and generous amounts of natural light. Two cinemas are located behind the bar, while on the other side of the cafe, visitors can view the activities of the printmakers' workshop.

On the lower two levels of the original brick warehouse, the university spaces have a distinct territory. The university gallery, which will be publicly accessible from time to time, is connected by a staircase leading from the cafe down to the lower floors. Offices are located immediately behind the entrance area and extend along the east side of the building. Public areas are generally restricted to levels three and four (four being the entrance), with the lower floor housing the two cinemas, printmakers' workshop and cafe bar. The larger cinema has a window on to the river Tay with an external sliding shutter, making a subtle yet explicit transition between daily life and the ephemeral life of a film.

The lower two floors are connected by a staircase, with views down to the university facilities. A large double-height experimental studio provides space for workshops and rehearsals, although occasionally it will open to the public. Laboratories and offices are grouped around the big space, which is divided from the gallery by large sliding screens to encourage spatial and social fluidity. The experimental gallery is similarly separated from the circulation space. Both university and printmakers' workshop have the possibility of their independent external access by a new semi-circular lightwell excavated on the north side of the warehouse.

The internal corner of the L-shaped building also dissolves with sliding screens to allow the space to flow imperceptibly between inside and outside.

The elevations explore layering suggested by the eroded brick warehouse. On top of the brick shell, a line of pre-patinated green copper forms the new architecture of the entrance wing. The copper panels lap over each other and occasionally reemerge in existing window openings lower down the facade.

The entire composition is spanned by a horizontal floating roof which sets the datum on the sloping site. The foyer's west wall reveals the new architecture on its own, with a series of green copper panels lapping over each other with layered steel and glass block window panels. Around the entrance area, two timber L-shaped doors form a wall directing visitors to the entrance door. In warm weather, the architects hope that the doors will be open permanently.

Roof lighting invites you to follow an illuminated pathway from the entrance into the new gallery. Cantilevered lookout windows on the south and west elevations are also designed to pull people into the far corners of the major gallery. From the west window, there are views of the Tay Rail Bridge and from the north the Perth Road and the courtyard created by the L-shaped building. Outside the main entrance, the usual paraphernalia of banners and bollards advertise the centre's forthcoming attractions. Not that they will be entirely necessary: regardless of its artistic programme, the building has already made its presence felt.