Summary
- Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the V&A East Storehouse in London, transforming a former 2012 London Olympics broadcast center into a museum space.
- The V&A East Storehouse is designed to display the museum’s extensive collection, housing over 500,000 objects, including 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 Archives.
- The Storehouse functions as both a display and a working space, featuring conservation studios with public viewing areas and an “Order an Object” system for visitors.
The V&A Museum has unveiled its long-awaited Storehouse outpost in East London, which features a design by architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro that puts the museum’s vast collection of objects on display.
Officially opening to the public on Saturday, May 31, V&A East Storehouse spans four levels and is the size of more than 30 basketball courts. The space was once a broadcast centre for the London Olympics in 2012, but has since been reworked by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to house the 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 Archives.
“Instead of the hard distinctions between storage and display, conservation and curation, back-of-house and front-of-house, V&A East Storehouse creates a new mixture,” said David Allin, Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
“To realize the project, everyone had to step out of their comfort zone: curators became storage experts, technical services staff acted as exhibition designers, and we, as architects, learned to be collection managers.”
While visitors typically access the museum’s collection through curated exhibitions, the Storehouse allows them to have a peek backstage. Visitors enter the building and arrive into a vast atrium, where a cafe from London favorite E5 Bakehouse and workshop spaces are located.
Although partially visible from the ground level, the actual store (technically named the Weston Collections Hall) is set up a short flight of stairs and behind thick metal doors. The space is organised around a central atrium, which is illuminated by a huge row of lighting panels suspended from the ceiling.
Six large-scale objects, which have been tucked away for decades because of their size and complexity, are now on view and are used to anchor the collection space. These include the 1930s Kaufmann Office, the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US, an architectural section from Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London, and the largest Picasso work in the world, which stands over 10 metres high and 11 metres wide.
These are, of course, a drop in the ocean in terms of what is located in the store, which visitors are invited to walk around freely, rather than have to follow a strict guided tour. They are also able to book out the objects they’d like to view via an online system, “Order an Object”. (According to the museum, the most popular item ordered so far is a 1954 evening dress by Cristóbal Balenciaga).
A real draw of a visit to the Storehouse, though, comes in the form that it is actually a working space. Inside, staff work at four new multi-purpose conservation studios, with a glass overlook allowing visitors a peek into what’s happening.
“It has been a joy to work with the V&A’s curators and conservators in creating this new kind of institution: neither warehouse nor museum, but rather a hybrid shared by staff and the public with expanded opportunities for access and exchange,” said Elizabeth Diller, Founding Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
The V&A East Storehouse opens to the public this weekend, with the V&A East Museum opening in 2026.
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