V&A Dundee

Embracing the multi-purpose space

ATS worked with this new museum to create a multimedia tour of the building and permanent exhibition galleries.

Challenge: Visitors to V&A Dundee enjoy spending time in the building – its striking architecture; its warm and welcoming feel; its cafe, restaurant and shop – and also in their permanent exhibition galleries. We were briefed to create a digital interpretive solution that could link the two together in a handheld guide, encouraging visitors to interact with the building in a more meaningful way and to understand it in a wider context. There was also desire to create some object-level digital content about V&A collection items in the Scottish Design Galleries.

Solution: We took the view that Kengo Kuma’s striking building is V&A Dundee’s largest object. Drawing on our experience of helping visitors to understand collections, we applied the same techniques of encouraging people to look at the museum building in the same way. Where we might use an interview with an expert or curator to help understand an object in a gallery, we used interview content with the architect, people who worked on the construction and also staff who work in the building every day to build up a holistic view of the building.

We used visual cues inside the building – spaces, architectural features, internal and external views – to hang these digital stories on physical places. And, of course, we delivered some super content about the items on display in the Scottish Design Galleries. Two highlights are the interpretation of the interior of Charles Rennie Macintosh’s tea room, which visitors can stand inside. And an interview with the maker of the computer game Lemmings, made in Dundee, not far from the museum.