Immersing visitors in over half a million works from the V&A collection, the just-opened V&A East Storehouse presents unprecedented public access to an immense archive of great design.

With the curatorial team led by Brendan Cormier, Chief Curator of V&A East, and designed by New York-based architecture practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the V&A East Storehouse spans four levels, with over 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books and nearly 1,000 archives calling the building home. With a total space of 16,000 square metres – bigger than 30 basketball courts – the Storehouse is astounding. 

Free to visit and view, the V&A East Storehouse showcases the collection without the barriers of glass cases in an open storage setting, allowing visitors to see firsthand both modest and grand designs in all their glory. Launched in the lead-up to the V&A East Museum in Spring 2026 (also opening in the new cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park), both the V&A East and V&A East Storehouse present two new free cultural destinations in London.

Champ Editorial Director Monique Kawecki asks Cormier more about the vast, eclectic collection and curating – with the team – the opening installations from 250,000 artefacts, quite the feat. Through the V&A East Storehouse’ opening, a new way for curiosity to lead and shape perspectives is opened, a democratic way for all to access a comprehensive collection of art, design and performance spanning all creative disciplines.

CHAMP: Tell us how this journey has been, from conception of the V&A East Storehouse to now, finally launching?

Brendan Cormier: It’s been wild and surreal! The project originated from a very pragmatic problem to resolve – the need to find a new home for our off-site storage – and an initial challenge that we gave ourselves: what if our storage facility could be radically accessible to everyone. From these more or less abstract ideas and challenges, it’s been a gradual process over ten years of moving from design to reality. Even though I’ve stared at the renderings and building plans a thousand times over, I still can’t quite get over rush of a feeling of seeing the public use the space every day now that we’re open.

You first pre-launched at the Venice Architecture Biennale, with an exhibition titled ‘On Storage’ challenging our existing thoughts on storage. Tell us more about that move and working with architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) that curated the space. 

In anticipation of opening the Storehouse, we wanted to work with DS+R to contextualise the problem of storage as not being limited to museums, but something global and all-encompassing.

All architecture is a form of storage, and systems of storage dictate our everyday lives. We wanted to focus on global logistics and supply chains, by following the life and death of a single toothbrush. We go from its conception in a factory in China, to its death in a waste management site in the Venetian lagoon. By focusing on the circulation of this one toothbrush, through several storage typologies (factory, distribution centre, container, truck, home, plane), we unpack how circulation and storage are two sides of the same coin.

With DS+R designing the V&A East Storehouse, can you tell us about the layout through your eyes as a curator?

The architectural idea was to have the visitor emerge into a heart of collection, carving out a void in a typical racking system, as if you’re hacking through crates, and exposing their contents. It’s a throwback to the notion of the Cabinet of Curiosities, surrounded on all sides by an overwhelming array of things, but with an aesthetic of 21st century logistics.

With the museum across four levels, how did you approach curating the opening installations from 250,000 artefacts in the collection.

There are two layers to the curation. First are a series of ‘large objects’ that you encounter as you move through the space: a Mughal-era colonnade from a bathhouse complex in Agra, a segment of a facade from the social housing complex Robin Hood Gardens, a 15^th century Spanish ceiling, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed office space, and a 1920s kitchen. Most of these objects were too large to find a place anywhere else in our family of museum sites, and we had the opportunity here to design permanent homes for them, rather than be confined to crates in storage. The second layer are small displays, curated by various people across the museum and our wider network, which speak to how collections are made, how the museum works, and how collections can be a sourcebook for design and creativity.

Enabling visitors to get closer than ever before, what did you have to take into consideration when curating and displaying very rare objects?

The first step was making a leap of faith and trusting that visitors will be equally responsible for the safety of the collection as museum staff. There are risks involved in allowing visitors to get closer than ever before, but these are measured risks that any museum can take. We talk a lot about creating a contract of trust between visitor and staff, and a sense of co-ownership of the collection. This is a national collection, it’s owned by every citizen of the UK, so we are all collectively responsible for its well-being. If you can communicate that well, through subtle cues in the design, but also through training staff how to speak and interact with visitors, you are doing a lot in terms of insuring the safety of the objects inside.

Taking it even further, the V&A East Storehouse allows the public to look up anything in the collection online, and request to see it in person at the Storehouse in a fortnight. How is this concept working?

The programme is called Order an Object, and it’s working really well. We are already fully booked with appointments throughout the summer. Many people express disbelief that anyone can order anything in the building for a personal viewing, no questions asked. But again, that’s an important part for us in democratizing access to the collection.

Can you expand on what is in the entire Storehouse collection, and what are some of your personal highlights?

There are 250,000 objects, 350,000 books and 1,000 archives. It compromises a majority of our furniture, fashion, textile and performance collections, as well as many other things, even poisonous darts. Highlights include our stage cloth collection, for which we have a gallery purpose-built to be able to show them, but my favourite ‘object’ is the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotsky in the 1920s as a way of rendering domestic labour easier and more efficient.

From here, what next for the V&A East Storehouse through your curatorial work?

The fun part begins! We get to continually find ways to tell new stories with the collection, and invite different community constituencies to tell their own stories with these objects. We’re planning a rolling-series of artists commissions in the future to respond to the collection, but also thinking of dynamic ways to programme the space so that it feels like a really discursive space of surprise encounters.

V&A East Storehouse
Parkes Street, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, London, E20 3AX
Admission is Free – Order an Object Link Here

Text: Monique Kawecki
Images: Henry Williams for Champ Magazine©