Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre
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The entrance prow on to Perth Road
David Churchill (website) Download Original
Restoration and extension of warehouse to house galleries, cinemas, print workshops, shop and research facilities around a central social space and cafe.
The building partially reuses the brick warehouse of the former Macleans garage and forms an 'L' shaped plan on a site which falls three storeys from front to back. The cafe and foyer sit at the internal corner of this 'L' and are therefore at the heart of the building in plan and section.
Adjacent to the cafe and visible from it is the world of the printmakers, placed there as an enticement to participate whilst beneath is the two storey 'engine room' of the university facilities grouped around a double height experimental gallery.
The language of the building grows out of the idea of inserting the new facilities within the eroded shell of the former brick warehouse. New building slips past the old in a series of planar elements of copper glass and steel. These planes then become a language of the new wing beneath a single unifying roof profile and are repeated in sliding doors and walls internally.
Data
- Begun: Mar 1997
- Completed: 1999
- Floor area: 5,145m2
- Sector: Arts and culture
- Total cost: £5.5M
- Funding: Private
- Tender date: Dec 1996
- Procurement: JCT80 (with Contractor's Design Portion), Local Authorities Edition/two-stage selective tendering
- Address: 152 Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4DY, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: Richard Murphy Architects
- Project architects: Alan Grey, Bill Black, Brent Railton, Edward Hollis, Ian Strakis, James Mason, Oliver Chapman, Richard Murphy, Will Tunnel
- Client: Dundee City Council
- Structural engineer: Arup Scotland
- Mechanical and Electrical Engineer: Arup Scotland
- Quantity surveyor: Thomson Bethune
- Main contractor: Torith Construction Ltd
- Acoustic engineer: Sandy Brown Associates
Suppliers
- Lighting : Zumtobel Staff Lighting
- Roofling: Corus Distribution & Building Systems
- Roof membrane: Sarnafil
- External Render: STO