After a couple of days in East Neuk with decent weather it turned grey and rainy one day and we all decided to go to Dundee and see the new design Scottish design museum, an affiliate of V&A in London. It is the first V&A outside London and the first Scottish design museum. The building was designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.
There are no straight external walls and the exterior holds 2,500 pre-cast stone panels. And the same theme with the panels and curved walls continue inside, but the panels are no longer stone but wood. We enjoyed a few hours sheltered from the rain.
Outside next to V&A the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Discovery is laid up. It was the first ship designed especially for scientific research and is built extra sturdy to travel through the pack ice. The design was based on the great Dundee whalers and she was built at a yard in Dundee. She carried three masts but had also a coal-fired engine. Discovery was launched in 1901 and carried Scott and Shackleton on their first and highly successful voyage to Antarctica – the Discovery Expedition. Discovery stayed frozen in the ice for two years after arriving into Antarctica but came back with lots of valuable scientific data. They defined that Antarctica was indeed a continent and they could locate the South Magnetic Pole quite accurately. They came (on land) as far south as 82 degrees and 18 minutes.
