Inside the V&A East Storehouse
Glass Floors and 'Hacked' Displays
The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East Storehouse, including over 100 mini curated displays ‘hacked’ into the ends and sides of the storage racking. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
Ten years in the making, the V&A East Storehouse opens at East Bank, the new cultural quarter in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, on May 31. Take a look inside V&A's “working store and visitor attraction” designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Evidence of a growing trend for arts institutions to make warehouses of art publicly accessible (see also: Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, designed by MVRDV), V&A built the V&A East Storehouse as a four-story, 16,000-m2 (172,220-sf) “museum experience” with purpose-built storage for over 250,000 objects, 350,000 books and a thousand archives. It is housed inside Here East, the former media center designed by Allies & Morrison for the 2012 London Olympics. Pervading the competition-winning design by New York's Diller Scofidio + Renfro are glass floors, which allow visitors to see even more of the art, fashion, and other objects sitting on shelves, and give occasional glimpses of the V&A staff fetching objects for display or conservation; studios for the latter are aligned with V&A East Storehouse being as much a “working store” as a visitor attraction. Want to see something not on display? V&A's new Order an Object service enables anyone to book access to an object and see it for free, seven days a week.
Take a visual tour through V&A East Storehouse:
Exterior view of V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
The Welcome space at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East Storehouse is anchored by six large-scale objects, including a building section from the now-demolished Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
View of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London, at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Kemka Ajoku for V&A)
The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East is anchored by six large-scale objects, including the exquisite 15th-century carved and gilded wooden ceiling, the Torrijos Ceiling, from the now lost Torrijos Palace in Spain. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
View of the exquisite 15th-century carved and gilded wooden ceiling, the Torrijos Ceiling, from the now lost Torrijos Palace in Spain, at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: David Parry, PA Media Assignments)
View of Weston Collections Hall, which features over 100 mini curated displays, at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Kemka Ajoku for V&A)
Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office at V&A East Storehouse – the only Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside the USA. (Photo: Kemka Ajoku for V&A)
Entrance tunnel to V&A East Storehouse’s Weston Collections Hall, flanked by ‘as stored’ sculptural busts. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
View of Weston Collections Hall at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Kemka Ajoku for V&A)
The 17th century Agra Colonnade, an extraordinary example of Mughal architecture from the bathhouse at the fort of Agra, visible through the Weston Collections Hall glass floor, and accessible via Object Encounters at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
Mesh roll-out storage racking at V&A East Storehouse. Available via Object Encounters visits. (Photo: Hufton + Crow for V&A)
Order an Object appointment at V&A East Storehouse. Object pictured is Althea McNish, ‘Rubra,’ furnishing fabric, 1961. (Photo: Bet Bettencourt for V&A)
Multi-purpose conservation studio, visible by the Conservation Overlook at V&A East Storehouse. (Photo: David Parry, PA Media Assignments)
