V&A East Storehouse: On Storage Curated by Brendan Cormier

La Biennale di Venezia and the V&A present On Storage as the special project for the Applied Arts Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2025.

Photos: Hufton+Crow

Curated by Brendan Cormier, Chief Curator of V&A East, in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the pavilion will explore the global architecture of storage. On Storage explores the global architecture of storage used for the circulation of things. It features a newly commissioned six-channel film entitled Boxed: The Mild Boredom of Order directed by DS+R.

This artistic commission was created in anticipation of the public opening of V&A East Storehouse in London on 31 May 2025. V&A East Storehouse is the V&A’s new working store and free visitor attraction, designed by DS+R. A world-first in size, scale and ambition, and new source of inspiration for all, V&A East Storehouse will immerse visitors in over half a million works from the V&A collection spanning every creative discipline.

The exhibition in Venice will feature a newly commissioned, immersive 6-screen film installation directed by DS+R. The film follows an everyday consumer product, a toothbrush, on its journey through various forms of storage across the globe, from the massive scale of a fulfilment warehouse to the compact space within a suitcase.

The pavilion will also present large-scale photographs of V&A East Storehouse, DS+R’s original architectural model and sketchbook, and behind the scenes photography of the new storage facility at work, taken by emerging East London-based photographers.

A Meditation on the Role Storage Plays in all our Lives

Storage is everywhere, yet it rarely registers in our everyday consciousness. Most storage spaces are behind closed doors, inaccessible to the public, or not conventionally classified as such.

On Storage presents a view of the world as a massively interwoven and complex series of storage architectures, designed to accommodate an ever-increasing quantity of stuff produced.

The film at the centre of On Storage is a meditation on the role storage plays in all our lives: from the vast networks of global logistics that move goods and products around, to the way we acquire, collect and store objects within our homes, or carry them with us when we travel.

Using documentary film shot on location within storage facilities, homes and in transit, we experience the storage and circulation of goods at a personal level; from work of distribution centre employees and baggage handlers to the process of packing possessions for a trip overseas – heightening our awareness of the spaces and places that goods and the people that move them inhabit.

A New Focus for the V&A in the Heart of East London

V&A East is a new focus for the V&A in the heart of east London, as part of East Bank, the new cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. V&A East is dedicated to creative opportunity and its power to bring change.

Two new free cultural destinations – V&A East Storehouse and V&A East Museum, scheduled to open in spring 2026– will open up the V&A collection for all, celebrate making in all its forms and create new possibilities for everyone.

V&A East Storehouse offers unprecedented public access to the behind-the-scenes world of the institution’s working stores. Spanning four levels, and at 16,000m2 – bigger than 30+ basketball courts – V&A East Storehouse is home to over 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books and nearly 1,000 archives.

Taking over a large section of the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre (now Here East), it’s designed to give unprecedented access and greater transparency, breaking down physical barriers and removing glass cases to get visitors closer than ever before to their national collections, and take them behind-the-scenes.

V&A East Storehouse’s central Weston Collections Hall spans three levels. Anchoring the Collections Hall are six large-scale architectural objects – many have not been on display for decades due to their size.

Following major conservation, these include the 1930s Kaufmann Office, the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US; an exquisite 15th century carved and gilded wooden ceiling from the now lost Torrijos Palace near Toledo in Spain; and a full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century.

Others include an architectural fragment from Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London; the 17th century Agra Colonnade; which is an extraordinary example of Mughal architecture from the bathhouse at the fort of Agra; and a monumental Ballets Russes theatre stage cloth standing over 10 metres high.