Diller Scofidio + Renfro transforms London hangar into V&A East Storehouse

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/05/28/diller-scofidio-renfro-va-east-storehouse/







American studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro has completed V&A East Storehouse, the publicly accessible working storage facility of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Built as part of the East Bank cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Park, the 16,000-square-metre facility houses 250,000 objects, 350,000 books and 1,000 archives, and is set to open to the public this weekend. It forms the first of two new cultural venues being created by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in east London, with the V&A East Museum scheduled to open in spring 2026.







V&A East Storehouse is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro as a new model for museum storage. Its design included the overhaul of a large section of the Here East hangar – an industrial media complex originally built as the broadcasting centre for the 2012 London Olympics. "We basically just built on the industrial feel [of the building]," studio co-founder Elizabeth Diller told Dezeen during a preview of the building.





"It is built strong and really simple. The periphery is solid – it doesn't have windows and has a very deep floor plate," added Diller. "It was the perfect blank slate to do something with." "The building, as we inherited, lent itself to this very easy adaptation and anchoring of new walkways and structures," continued studio principal David Allin. Externally, the building's glazed facade remains largely untouched, with a black tower used to signpost the facility's entrance. This space opens up to a lobby, off of which an entrance hall runs along the building's front, providing a cafe and work space complete with an open-plan seating area.





From here, a centralised staircase guides visitors from the lobby into the main hall, flanked by rows of metal storage racks that double as displays. At the programme's centre, the interior opens up to the Weston Collections Hall, held within a 20-metre-high void crowned with translucent roof openings. A spacious platform occupies the centre of this space, serving as a viewing area overlooking its three upper floors and below through a glazed floor opening. Racks filled with artefacts extend outwards in every direction, with views across the vast collection enabled by mesh metal grating flooring and glass guardrails.

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