Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum - in pictures

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
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

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
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

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
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

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
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

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 Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/Guardian

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
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

The museum's large collection of trams and trains evokes a bygone era when Glaswegians travelled by steam, diesel and chain-driven vehicles
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

This garish green steam locomotive looks thoroughly at home against the pistachio-coloured backdrop of the surrounding gallery
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

This street scene, in which a horse-drawn hearse stands before a gown and mantle shop, is one of several reconstructions in the museum offering an insight into Glasgow's past
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

An internal viewing bridge spans the collection, from which a dazzling array of cars, bicycles and other forms of transport may be viewed against the arresting background of Hadid's designs
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Swooping and swirling, fabulous and futuristic, Zaha Hadid's innovative design for the Riverside Museum is both typically adventurous and characteristically practical
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian