Dundee: the difference a bridge makes

 

Dundee before the road bridge: From the Ordnance Survey 7th series, 1950s. You can see there is already a ring-road avoiding the centre

Dundee is a case study of urban renewal, but to be more precise, an example of urban catastrophe. Dundee owes its grandeur, at least as far as the visitor can see today, to the dramatic 19th-century expansion of the town for industry, for linen, then jute, followed by a long decline; the presence of the biggest comic publisher in the UK seems to have done little to arrest the decaying fabric of so many of the older buildings. As the docks declined during the 20th century, there were attempts to bring the city back to life. The single biggest change was the building of the Tay Road Bridge, completed 1966. According to Wikipedia, the UK government was against it, but campaigns by local businessmen led to it being built anyway.

The result is a traffic nightmare. The bridge brings traffic right into the middle of the city,. To be fair, other cities, such as Newcastle and Glasgow, had a motorway put through the middle of them; but there was already a movement to put roads away from the city centre. Oxford resisted an attempt to put a ring road through Christ Church meadow. However, subsequent attempts to repurpose the docks and the industrial buildings now have to struggle against the effect of the traffic, which Dundee is probably now stuck with for the next hundred years. Pevsner describes Dundee as “the most incoherent” of Scottish cities. I’m not sure if “incoherent” is the way to describe it, but two sets of dual carriageways along the waterfront, cutting off the V&A and the waterfront from the rest of the city, is just a mess. The dual carriageways make it a city that gives priority to fast traffic, with a few pedestrian crossings. Today there are a few stand-out buildings, including the V&A, but individual buildings don’t make a city. It is possible to find some life in the city, but the visitor has to search for it in locations that would not immediately be noticed. Here are three representative buildings from the centre of Dundee.

Present-day Dundee, after the bridge: the Tay Road Bridge, opened 1966, brings traffic into the middle of the city

The V&A Dundee

This is Dundee’s trophy building. Like a footballer’s wife, the V&A displays its grandeur very ostentatiously. The stated brief to the architect must have been to create a statement, which is fine; but the brief has been interpreted in the most gaudy fashion, to be honest resembling some of the Victorian buildings in the centre, where showing off how much money you had spent was very much the intention.

The Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, stated he was inspired by some extraordinary cliff formations near Dundee, comprising row upon row of  deep horizonal bands. But for devotees of form following function, the resulting building is false. There are indeed similar horizontal bands to cliffs, but they have been applied purely as decoration. They have no function in the building. On examining them closely, it appears each band has had an electrified strip attached to it to prevent birds landing. Clearly those bands have been a problem from day one.

The building comprises two main upside-down V-shaped blocks, interlocked so as to leave a walkway through the middle. Given the winds along the Tay Estuary, it is hardly surprising that this gap has created a wind tunnel, and does not make for a pleasant walking experience. This is one of many tell-tale signs that concern for visitors on foot was not a major consideration.

As you approach the main door, you notice a further questionable feature: each of the  main buildings is sitting in a pool of shallow water. Nothing grows in this water, and there were no ducks or fish. To keep this water looking clear means chemicals must have been added to it, so the water can remain clear (and sterile). This cheap trick went out of fashion with Centre Point in the 1960s, if not before.

The interior is as full of non-functional items as the outside. As with the exterior, there are many overlapping panels, this time of wood, against the walls. This might be good for the acoustics, but the wood slats have no structural function. Inside and out feels like a structure that has had pretty bits added after the load-bearing parts had been designed; the aesthetics were added later.

All the exhibition spaces are on the first floor, and on the two days we visited, the lift was out of order. Certainly, upstairs there are several good display spaces, and a café with a great view, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain; but for me, the magic wasn’t in the building at all; it was the sweet women (they were all women, it seems) positioned at the main entrance and at the top of the stairs, who chatted with all the visitors. I didn’t see anything like this in London. They made Dundee come to life. 

Outside the V&A, once you had negotiated the two dual carriageways carrying the traffic from the Tay Bridge through the middle of the town, it was a 10-minute walk past the anonymous railway station, hidden within a hotel front, to the main shopping streets, which looked very run down. Again, this was the responsibility of the planners. By building no fewer than three new shopping centres, the Overgate Shopping Centre, the Keiler Centre and the Wellgate Centre, the council had condemned the existing shopping streets more or less to dereliction. Each time we walked along the High Street, there were drinkers gathered around a couple of fast-food outlets. There were people waiting for buses; but little sign of anyone lingering. It was only at Dundee Contemporary Arts that you escaped the traffic and felt you were in a place where people were happy to congregate. 

Dundee Contemporary Arts

This was a revelation. A relatively small development from 1996, DCA is successful partly because it doesn’t try to make a statement. It combines human-scale centres of activity: a café, a print workshop, a bookshop, an activity area for children, and a cinema. Everyone we spoke to in the centre was friendly and open to chat. The projectionist, for example, saw we were interested in seeing the projection booth and his collection of old projectors, and invited us in at the end of the film for a quick guided tour. The bookshop had the most interesting new books we found in Dundee. 

The Verdant Jute Museum

The Jute Museum, a former jute works, is a remarkable survival from the hundreds of jute mills in Dundee. It was built in 1833, so is one of the earlier mill buildings, but today, its position in the middle of the main concentration of mill buildings in Dundee means you have to walk through some very run-down areas to get to it: empty buildings, a few half-hearted attempts to repurpose vast warehouses, lots of graffiti, few if any people living there. Imagine the contrast when you enter the museum and are greeted by a volunteer who gives you an enthusiastic overview, asks you to give her a shout if you have any more questions or get lost, and is later seen collecting the empty plates in the café to help the kitchen staff. That sort of good will is rare. The museum itself is a magical place, even if some of the captions and displays are somewhat dated; Dundee is lucky to have such a survival. 

Conclusion

Dundee has some lovely people; everyone was open and welcoming. My suggestion for the town would be to move the bridge, an unlikely proposal – yet, I’m sorry to say, that providing any number of trophy museum buildings will not fix its problems.