Cabinet of Curiosities
The new V&A Storehouse combines the functions of a museum and a warehouse and displays objects in a steel racking system (image: Hufton + Crow).
Entering into V&A Storehouse, towering racks of objects stretch from floor to ceiling, each one unashamedly in storage. Marble busts are strapped into their crates with white seatbelts, ornate shoes are stuffed with paper to maintain their shape, and mysterious objects loom under white dust sheets as though they decided to dress as ghosts for Halloween.
“On average, 3 per cent of a museum's collection is on display at any given time,” says Elizabeth Diller, cofounder of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. “The other 97 per cent is hidden away in a basement or off site in a warehouse, and as museums accumulate more and more collections, the proportion of works on display is just going to diminish over time.” After the UK government announced in 2015 that it was selling Blythe House, the V&A’s former storage space, the museum decided to combine the functions of a museum and a warehouse within a new location. “When we think about excessive use of energy and resources, the notion of hybridising something that we already know – storage and display – produces a paradigm shift,” Diller says.
The Storehouse was designed to resemble a cabinet of curiosities, with eclectic displays of different objects paired together (image: Hufton + Crow).
In contrast to the V&A’s other spaces in South Kensington, Bethnal Green, and Dundee, the Storehouse has a modest exterior that blends with the surrounding buildings in Here East, an industrial media complex originally built as the broadcasting centre for the 2012 London Olympics. Intentionally designed to target a younger audience and to expand the museum’s reach and relevance in east London, Storehouse and the museum’s upcoming V&A East Museum were both shaped by the ideas of the V&A East Youth Collective, a paid consultation programme for young people living, working and studying across east London. “Literally thousands of people who call east London home have welcomed us here,” says Tim Reeve, deputy director of the V&A. “[They have] so generously given of their time and stories to critique our thinking, challenge our assumptions and help shape and design almost every aspect of the experience.”
Image: Hufton + Crow.
“Arriving into this hall was always supposed to be cinematic,” Diller says, describing how visitors are led through a glass tunnel from the foyer that then opens out onto a large square surrounded by objects. “[We wanted] to produce this sense of sublime,” she says. “To just see this unfathomable collection stretching through the racking system.” The displays are intentionally eclectic: one glance around the room yields a black motorcycle, a piece of horse armour, a road sign, a cello and a gilded chest. “We decided to lean into the delirium of the V&A’s strange taxonomies, the mediums, the wide variety of sizes, the myriad of materials, the broad range of geographies and historical periods,” Diller says. The team were inspired by 16th-century cabinet of curiosities, eclectic displays of antiques and natural specimens within private homes, and unlike most museums Storehouse has very few labels or wayfinding systems. “Rather than following a curatorial voice, we have the opportunity to follow our curiosity and our instincts and discover things,” Diller says.
Empowering visitors to navigate the space freely is also part of Storehouse’s wish to encourage new interpretations of their collections. “One of the principles of Storehouse is really the notion that there is no single story,” chief curator Brendan Cormier says. “By radically opening up these collections, we can also radically open up the input and the interpretation of these spaces to find multiple meanings.” This intention is particularly clear in the Storehouse’s display of Robin Hood Gardens, one of post-war Britain’s most influential housing developments that began to be demolished in 2017. Alongside a piece of the building’s concrete facade are recordings of oral histories gathered from the building’s opening in 1972 up until 2024, and a film and a publication produced by young creatives. “It's not about historicising Robin Hood gardens,” explains Ben Selig, a curatorial fellow at V&A East. “It’s about talking about it in the present and in the future.” As evidence of its enduring legacy, Robin Hood Gardens is also inextricably linked to the design of Storehouse. “Robin Hood Gardens famously had these streets in the sky,” Cormier says, referring to the wide balconies of the estate that were intended to encourage social interaction. “All of our walkways have been designed to the same width of those in the original building.”
The Robin Hood Gardens display features a piece of the facade of the former social housing estate (image: Hufton + Crow).
Storehouse is also home to several other large exhibits which have rarely been displayed, such as the gigantic Pablo Picasso stage cloth that hangs magnificently in a dedicated room. “Stage cloths are really space hungry, and we would never have the proper space to show these at our South Kensington museum,” Cormier says, stepping behind the cloth to reveal the case it was once stored in, which looks like a coffin built for a giant. Nearby, a small room set aside for events has a gilded ceiling taken from a 15th-century palace in Spain and two Isokon Plus plywood long chairs sitting incongruously underneath its finery. “In east London, we still have the original Isokon Plus manufacturers,” Cormier explains. “We thought people would really like to recline in this space and meditate on the ceiling.” Another of Storehouse’s large exhibits, an office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for businessman Edgar J Kaufmann, is entirely panelled in plywood, a humble material made elegant through Wright’s marquetry of triangular and diagonal forms.
A stage cloth designed by Pablo Picasso that was too large to display in the V&A’s other locations (image: Hufton + Crow).
Hidden behind the racking system are rooms dedicated to Storehouse’s biggest innovation: the Order an Object service, which allows visitors to book up to five objects from the collection and closely examine them for between one and four hours. “The sort of rare transformational thing is that we are moving the concept from being on display to being on demand,” says Melissa Buron, the V&A’s head of collections, explaining that the amount of access visitors are able to get to an object is determined by how fragile or dangerous it is. “Many of our objects have hazards within them,” Buron says. “Some of them are hidden, like mercury or lead within objects, but we also have weapons in our collection.” While riskier objects can only be viewed, many others are available for visitors to handle themselves, with minimal supervision. “There will always be people in the room, but they won’t be looking over your shoulder all the time,” Buron says.
The Order an Object service gives opportunities for dramatic unboxing sessions as the objects transition out of storage and into the hands of the public. “When I was getting objects out for today, this one actually made me gasp,” Buron says, unzipping a garment bag to reveal a military-style jacket worn by Elton John during his 1981 world tour. With gloved hands she picks up a pair of shoes on stilts that were designed for walking in steamy hammams, and gestures to a hot pink Balenciaga gown which is currently the most ordered item. “We’ve had a phenomenal response already,” Buron says, adding that the Storehouse has received over 300 bookings in just 10 days. “We’re understanding for the first time what people actually choose, rather than us determining what people want to see,” Buron says. “We’re also understanding why people want to access objects – sometimes they are fashion students or researchers, but there are also people who have a personal reason for seeing something,” she says, giving the example of someone who booked to see four wedding dresses from the 1930s to help them decide what style they wanted to wear.
Storehouse’s studios have a glass overlook so that visitors can watch live conservation work (image: Hufton + Crow).
Storehouse represents a deeper understanding of the role that public engagement plays in a collection’s survival. “We wanted to demystify museums,” Reeve says. “[We wanted to] create a newfound sense of ownership over national collections, and in so doing, ensure their relevance and safeguard them for future generations.” Storehouse embodies a delicate push and pull between preservation and access, and while the Order an Object service could be seen to prioritise people over objects, many other aspects of the design appear to weigh these priorities differently. The glass overlook which visitors can peer through to watch people doing conservation work, for example, and the mesh metal flooring through which visitors can see the ghostly footprints of the people wandering above them, both prioritise transparency over comfort. “Everything about the architecture is objects first, then people second,” Cormier says, explaining that the glass walkway into the space acts as an air lock that maintains a cool temperature. “Because the objects will outlive us all, ultimately.”
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown