Plans to build a new Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park have been confirmed, with an opening date predicted for 2021.
The new V&A Museum for Stratford, London, is due to complement the existing V&A sites. It’s been termed the V&A East, and will be situated opposite Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre.
V&A East will take up residence in a seven-storey building of 18,000- square metres, and is being designed by RIBA gold medal-winning architects Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey.
The new venue will present some of the V&A’s collections in never-before-seen ways, and enhance access to 1,000 years of design, architecture, art and performance.
The museum is expected to encourage public participation in almost every aspect, with research and conservation spaces that are visible to the public.
Permanent galleries on site will include what’s said to be the first dedicated museum space in the UK to document the full breadth of digital design. Organisers claim that the V&A East will begin to write the design history of the digital age.
There will also be space for a rolling programme of major exhibitions, as well as studios for new and emerging practitioners.
Additionally, the new museum will allow the V&A to set up more temporary exhibitions and displays reacting to current events.
A team comprising multi-award winning architects Allies & Morrison, together with O'Donnell and Tuomey and other renowned studios have won an international competition to design the building.
Building work will commence in 2018 with a target opening date of 2021.
More about the V&A
The V&A is a leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity.
The museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion and textiles.
Groups, who will find a visit to the V&A free, can also enjoy photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics and book arts.
For further information visit www.vam.ac.uk.
(Photo credit: Sam Jacob Studio).
