‘We used to have something called social housing,” you will be able to tell your grandchildren, should you ever take them to V&A East Storehouse, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new outpost in east London. High up in the atrium, at the centre of this huge open-access repository of 250,000 objects, hangs a chunk of Robin Hood Gardens, a brutalist council estate in nearby Poplar that was recently bulldozed to make way for less affordable housing. Deftly suspended from the gantry, the poignant fragment now seems as much a relic of a bygone age as the 15th-century Islamic dome from a Spanish palace that is displayed across the hall. The estate’s precast concrete panels have been reassembled with just the same care as the dome’s intricate wooden marquetry, with doorhandles and letterboxes neatly arranged alongside memories of former residents, as well as artwork made with local kids exploring the “ethics of care”.
Such striking juxtapositions, and the often contentious stories behind them, lie at the heart of the new £65m facility, which provides a thrilling window into the sprawling stacks of our national museum of everything. But it is much more than just a window – it’s a total immersion. Unlike other open-access museum stores, which tend to offer a furtive peek through glass, the Storehouse thrusts visitors right into the middle of the action. You can roam the gantries while forklift trucks trundle to and fro beneath your feet. You might see someone unloading a porcelain statue, or polishing a priceless collection of spoons, or gingerly packing poison darts. And you’re right in there with them, at the heady coalface of conservation.
