Hundreds of birthday messages float outside V&A Dundee to mark fifth anniversary

Children have sent birthday wishes to the V&A Dundee as it celebrates its fifth anniversary.

Scotland’s first ever design museum opened on September 15, 2018 and has since welcomed 1.7 million visitors.

Artist Kate Colin created 500 geometric paper twists containing candles, inspired by architect Kengo Kuma’s design for the building, and schoolchildren, visitors and community groups left messages inside them with their hopes for the city to mark the anniversary.

Children as young as five who visited from local primary schools took part in the event, which will be followed by more celebrations over the weekend.

Two pools of water outside the museum were filled with the paper designs.

Earlier this week, a new report by BOP Consulting and Tialt showed the V&A Dundee has generated £304 million for the Scottish economy since it opened.

Celebrations on Saturday will feature music performances by Be Charlotte and Andrew Wasylyk, free access to the Tartan exhibition, and street food on the plaza.

There will also be family activities, free museum tours and the opening of a new permanent display on V&A Dundee’s architecture, Stories From The Building.

It explores Kuma’s design, from the photograph of Scottish cliffs which inspired his first sketch, the models created for the international architectural competition in 2010, the beginning of construction from 2015, through to its completion in 2018.

The display, which will be in the Locke Hall on the ground floor of V&A Dundee, includes concept sketches, photography of the engineering and construction, and samples of building materials, including steel bars which reinforce the museum’s curving concrete shell and sun pipes which bring natural light in to save energy.

Interviews with the architects, project managers and engineers are accompanied by a new animation showing the development of the museum’s design and the complexity of its engineering and construction.