Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum
Glasgow's gleaming new Riverside Museum, designed by the Iraqi architect Zaha
Hadid to house the city's fascinating transport and travel collections, will
open to the public on 21 June 2011.
Bobbing in the water on the Riverside Museum's south side is the Glenlee, a
three-masted barque that has circumnavigated the globe four times since first
taking to the water in 1896. The Glenlee is one of only five Clyde-built
sailing ships still afloat.
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The zigzag of the museum's steel and zinc roof, redolent of a heartbeat on a
monitor, is the keynote external feature of the award-winning Zaha Hadid's
first major building in Britain and is sure to heighten anticipation of her
design for the Olympics 2012 Aquatics Centre
The museum, which consists of a tunnel-like structure open at opposite ends to
the city and the Clyde, is spacious enough to display some 3,000 objects, more
than twice the number exhibited at the collection's old home in Kelvin Hall
The pleated walls of the zinc-clad building and Hadid's abundant use of glass,
which reflects the nearby cityscape, lend the building a flow and luminescence
that go well with its riverside setting.
The proximity of the Glenlee encourages visitors to step out on to the water,
without which Glasgow's transport history - and the museum which now houses it
- would never have existed.
From vintage cars to trams, locomotives, motorbikes, skateboards, prams and
shoes, the building's vast, pillar-less interior houses just about anything
that has ever helped Glaswegians get from A to B.
The museum's large collection of trams and trains evokes a bygone era when
Glaswegians travelled by steam, diesel and chain-driven vehicles
Swooping and swirling, fabulous and futuristic, Zaha Hadid's innovative design
for the Riverside Museum is both typically adventurous and characteristically
practical.
