Stratford – the V&A reserve

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Stratford – the V&A reserve

↑ View of Weston Collections Hall, which features over 100 mini curated displays, at V&A East Storehouse. Image courtesy of V&A. Photo credit: Kemka Ajoku.

Stratford’s New Treasure House: V&A East Storehouse

In the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford now has something quietly radical: the V&A East Storehouse – effectively the V&A’s reserve collection made visible. Instead of hiding most of its objects in distant basements and warehouses, the museum has turned its huge store into a public building where visitors can wander among the stacks and see how a major collection actually works.

V&A East Storehouse’s impressive archive collection. Photo credit: Visit London/Kirstine Spicer
Image courtesy of V&A.

The Storehouse is housed in the former Olympic Media Centre at Here East, a vast industrial shell now filled with high walkways, open shelves and bridges that cut through the space. Rather than pristine white cubes, you move through aisles of racks, crates and cabinets. Furniture, sculpture, textiles, theatre sets, fashion, toys and everyday design sit side by side; a carved ceiling might be placed near a couture dress, a neon sign or a prototype chair. It feels more like stepping into the V&A’s backstage than into a traditional gallery.

View of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London, at V&A East Storehouse. Image courtesy of V&A. Photo credit: David Parry, PA Media Assignments.

What makes this “reserve” special is how open it is. Large parts of the collection are on view in dense displays, but you can also look into conservation and research areas, watch specialists at work, and join short “object encounter” talks where staff focus on a single piece at a time. For students, artists and researchers there are bookable study spaces where specific objects, books or archive items can be brought out and examined closely. Instead of the museum deciding one fixed story for you, the Storehouse invites you to build your own route through the material.

Picasso at V&A East Storehouse. Photo Credit: Visit London/Kirstine Spicer

Although it holds a national collection, the Storehouse is strongly rooted in east London. Displays pick up local histories – from textiles and craft to architecture and community activism – and connect them to global design and pop culture. Over time, it will also house major archives such as the David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, bringing iconic music and performance materials into the heart of Stratford’s new cultural district.

The building is part of the wider “East Bank” development on and around the Olympic Park, alongside Sadler’s Wells, the BBC, London College of Fashion and UCL. For Stratford, which for years was known mainly for trains, stadiums and shopping centres, the Storehouse marks a shift toward a different identity: a place where collections, education and everyday city life overlap.

Visiting the V&A East Storehouse

For all its ambition, the Storehouse is designed to be easy to use – and crucially, it’s free.

  • Location: Parkes Street, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, E20 3AX, inside the Here East complex, on the Hackney Wick / Stratford edge of the park.
  • Opening hours: Open daily 10:00–18:00, with late opening until 22:00 on Thursdays and Saturdays. 
  • Admission: General admission is free; you don’t need to book. Some special exhibitions and events may be ticketed.

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