The new V&A museum coming to Stratford
The V&A East Storehouse opens in 2024, and will house more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books, and 1,000 archives. Offering a completely new museum experience, the museum’s programme will focus as much on why museums exist and how they care for their collections, as it does on the objects themselves.
Alongside this, other spaces within this Stratford museum will host workshops, performances, pop-up displays and screenings. The unique space will finally give the V&A the opportunity to showcase room sets and large architectural fragments that, until now, were too challenging to put on permanent display. Among these are interior design and architecture marvels such as the 15th century gilded, carved wooden ceiling of the sadly now lost Torridos Palace in Spain, or the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US – the stunning, cypress-panelled 1930s office created for business Edgar J. Kaufmann. As well as this, visitors will be able to see Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s ‘Frankfurt Kitchen’ – the compact design which formed the basis for most western kitchens over the last 100 years – the only original example of this on display in a London museum.
Opening in 2025, the five-storey V&A East Museum will offer spectacular views across the Stratford Waterfront, with space for major exhibitions, installations, live performances, socialising, and late-night events.
The galleries will include stories of Stratford and east London’s heritage of creativity and manufacturing, telling stories of local creatives past and present, and providing east London with studio space for drop-in and pre-booked activities and events. Textiles feature heavily in its collection, spotlighting world-renowned designers such Eileen Gray, Althea McNish, Asha Sarabhai, Dame Vivienne Westwood, and Rei Kawakubo.
And there’s so much more to the development of East Bank London. As well as the new V&A, Stratford will become home for some our largest cultural institutions, including BBC Music, London College of Fashion, and Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Bringing an estimated 2,500 new jobs to the area, this will firmly establish East Bank London as the city’s new cultural heart.