The V&A East Storehouse, a new museum space in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opens to the public on May 31, 2025, offering free admission seven days a week. Housed in the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre, the 172,222-square-foot facility displays over 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives from the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection. Designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the Storehouse features a glass-floored Collections Hall where visitors can freely explore shelves and mini-curated displays, with objects changed frequently. Highlights include the Agra Colonnade (1630s) from Shah Jahan's bathhouse and a section of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate by Alison and Peter Smithson.
This opening matters because it represents a radical shift in museum engagement—turning a working storage facility into a public exhibition space that prioritizes discovery over curated narratives. As the first phase of the V&A East project (the main museum opens in spring 2026), the Storehouse is part of the East Bank cultural quarter, aiming to democratize access to world-class collections in a previously underserved area of East London. Its free, open-access model and focus on rotating objects could influence how other institutions rethink the relationship between storage, conservation, and public experience.