Archinect - News

Photos: First V&A East building tops out in East London ceremony

2021-12-15T13:42:00-05:00

Exciting news in the museum world as the first site of the long-awaited Victoria & Albert Museum’s East extension has officially topped out as of this week.

The new V&A East has been years in the making. After overcoming roadblocks which threatened its existence beginning with sharp public criticism at its inception in 2016 and lasting all the way until this past fall, when it was announced that a much-heralded partnership with the American Smithsonian institution had to be called off thanks to unforeseen circumstances caused by the pandemic.

The O'Donnell + Tuomey-designed building is one of two slated to transform East London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park into a premier destination for the city’s artistic community.

The building was inspired by an x-ray of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1956 silk taffeta dress and will house a slate of progressive exhibitions and an employment program which includes the newly-established V&A East Youth Collective along...

A brutalist fragment displayed at the Venice Biennale speaks to our current housing crisis

2018-05-15T18:41:00-04:00

While some were delighted that at least a small part of the architectural heritage of Robin Hood Gardens was being preserved for posterity, others were furious that the V&A – a so-called ‘arms-length’ body, governed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the Prime Minister – considered the estate valuable enough to collect, but not valuable enough to help save from demolition in the first instance.

The story behind London's brutalist Robin Hood Gardens reveals issues pertinent to our current housing crisis. Crystal Bennes unpacks the V&A's decision to preserve and display a section of demolished housing in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, revealing condemnation of the building before it was even completed.

China's new Design Society launches with V&A collaboration

2017-12-04T14:42:00-05:00

The Design Society, China’s first dedicated cultural design hub, opened its doors this weekend in Shenzhen. Established by China Merchants Shekou (CMSK), the group aims to create a platform for global collaboration and creativity giving China a center point for design and innovation. The opening also launched The Sea World Culture and Arts Center (SWCAC) working in tandem with the Design Society. China's new center is designed by Fumihiko Maki and features a roof park, several public plazas, and a range of horizon views.

Design Society, Shenzhen, China. Photo: Design Society.

This opening is the result of a collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum, a partnership consisting of professional training, concept design, and the center's site-specific inaugural exhibition, Values of Design, along with two major touring V&A exhibitions. In sync with this initiation, The Design Society has an open invitation for future collaborations and partnerships as part of a larger effort to pr...

Kengo Kuma visits his ship-like V&A Dundee museum as exterior nears completion

2017-10-18T16:09:00-04:00

Ten years after a Dundee V&A museum was first considered, the finishing touches are being applied to the exterior of the £80.1m building ahead of its opening next summer. [...] No amount of artist's impressions and computer-generated fly-throughs could have prepared the city for the true size and scale of the imposing design of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who will inspect the building on Wednesday.

Kengo Kuma was in Scotland today to inspect construction progress on the impressive V&A Museum of Design Dundee he designed.

Video via V&A Dundee on YouTube

He seemed very pleased, stating: "As an architect, seeing a completed building can be stressful, as some times the quality isn’t satisfactory. But in this case the quality, and the attention to detail has given me great satisfaction to see. I was so impressed when I saw how the building works together with the River Tay. Some museums are just boxes – this isn’t just a box, it is linked to nature."

Closeup of the exterior walls. Image via V&A Dundee on Facebook.

The project is making significant strides, having just completed the exterior walls with its 2,500 cast stone panels that wrap the volume like planks on a sailing ship. Construction crews also recently dismantled the temporary cofferdam that separated the structure from the River Tay.

The building is scheduled to open in 2018.

London's Victoria & Albert Museum partnering to open China's first major design museum

2017-08-24T20:00:00-04:00

Museum creation has increasingly become a major cultural export for countries. The controversial Louvre Abu Dhabi is slated to open later this year and the Guggenheim has made attempts in recent years to open up satellite museums in both Helsinki and Abu Dhabi, to name a few. Now, the London-based Victoria & Albert Museum is preparing to launch a new museum in China that will be the country's first ever major design museum.

The UK museum has partnered with China Merchants Group, who are behind the Sea World Culture and Art Center in Shenzhen in which the museum will be housed. The complex has been designed by Japanese Pritzker laureate, Fumihiko Maki, and will become a large-scale urban development that involves retail, commercial, and residential buildings as well as the Design Society. The projects aim is to promote Chinese design to an international audience and present the best international design in China.

Deputy director of the V&A, Tim Reeve, described their role at the hel...

V&A Museum addition includes $70M all-porcelain public courtyard

2017-06-30T17:33:00-04:00

The bold addition features the world's first all-porcelain public courtyard, paved with 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles in 15 different patterns. The tiles were manufactured by Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum, the Netherlands' oldest registered company, established in 1572.

After six years of construction, the Exhibition Road Quarter, AL_A-designed courtyard space opened yesterday in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, adding 11,840 square feet of column-free flexible gallery space to the museum to help accommodate the V&A's headline exhibitions. Intended as a meeting point, public square and museum entrance, AL_A's extension is V&A’s largest architectural intervention in over 100 years.

The V&A Museum releases rendering of its new Photography Center designed by DKA

2017-06-05T13:03:00-04:00

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has revealed a rendering and the name of a major sponsor for its new Photography Centre. The former, by David Kohn Architects (DKA), showcase a redesigned gallery space that more than doubles the space previously allocated to the display of photography. The latter is the Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, which honors the legacy of Bernard Schwartz, an American businessman who took up photography late in life.

The DKA design features a modular system of display cases enabling a variety of exhibition formats. They won the commission to redesign the original nineteenth-century picture gallery in a competition.

“We are delighted to be working with the V&A and their curatorial team on this landmark project, not least because of my personal passion for photography,” states David Kohn. “Our approach has been to offer visitors the widest range of ways to engage with this world-leading collection, framed by the stunning architecture of the refurbished galle...

Tristram Hunt to resign as MP to take job as head of the V&A

2017-01-13T12:27:00-05:00

Tristram Hunt, the former shadow education secretary, has announced that he will resign as a Labour MP to become the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The move, which will come with a salary of over £145,000, will also trigger a by-election in Stoke, a constituency that is vulnerable to poaching by Ukip or the Conservative Party. Hunt has been vocally critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

According to the Guardian, Hunt’s appointment was a “genuine surprise”. That being said, higher-ups the art world have largely greeted the news warmly. Others have cause to worry: back in 2010, Hunt griped about free admission to London museums and called for reintroducing charges for national museums. But the V&A has said that Hunt is “fully committed to free museum entrance”.

V&A's main shop to be remodelled by Friend and Company Architects, with Millimetre and RA Projects

2016-08-12T12:32:00-04:00

The main shop in the V&A is being redesigned to create a more lively and flexible retail space at the centre of the gallery.

Friend and Company Architects, with Milimetre and RA Projects were selected from a shortlist of six practices, which included Ab Rogers Design, Brinkworth, Edge, Jamie Fobert Architects and Mark Pinney Architects.

David Bickle (Director of FuturePlan, Design, Estates and Exhibitions) from the selection panel said: “There has been a huge shift in the way that we engage with retail, and the role it plays in the wider cultural landscape. Friend and Company’s design reimagines the site of our current shop, offering a new framework for display that is bespoke, finely crafted, and eminently flexible. Their use of high quality materials and carefully detailed finishes perfectly aligns with the values of the V&A as the world's leading museum of art and design.”

Read more recent project updates and news in London here:

Nex-Architecture get approval for new restaurant on C...

Digital Elytrons. Latest Architecture Technology at the V&A Museum.

2016-07-06T04:48:00-04:00

Todays, pavilions are an omnipresent type of building. Unburdened to a certain degree from constraints of conventional architectures, such as program or function, pavilion designs offer architects a reign of technological and formal possibilities. Architects are commissioned for designs, in which speculation, provocation and experimentation is allowed, or even more, it is requested. Currently, visitors of Victoria & Albert Museum, run in the courtyard into an exemplary architecture experiment, posing a radical statement for contemporary digital architecture technology.

The Elytra Filament Pavilion, designed by a team of architects and engineers around Achim Menges from the Universities of Stuttgart and Munich, demonstrates a visionary for a yet to be determined digital future in the building industry. Within the context of the exhibition "Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design", the museum's courtyard has been turned into a test ground for the latest emerg...

"So much more than an engineer": Ove Arup gets his first museum retrospective

2016-06-16T19:37:00-04:00

“He was so much more than an engineer,” says the V&A’s Zofia Trafas White, who co-curated the show with Maria Nicanor. We are walking through a corridor of the Dane’s dreamy doodles, which forms a slightly surreal start to the show [...] “Designing,” Arup said, “is defining a sensible way of building.” Noticeably, all the projects on show trumpet their engineering credentials at full volume, as the (seemingly) logical expression of how they were made.

For more on Ove Arup and his firm, check out these links:

Ove Arup celebrated with new show at the V&A

2016-06-16T10:17:00-04:00

The show, curated by the V&A’s Maria Nicanor and Zofia Trafas White, is a fascinating exploration of the 20th century engineer’s life and work, and how it has influenced today’s practices in his field. Arup, fittingly argue the curators, was a true pioneer, championing real collaboration with architects, using a computer for the first time during the Sydney Opera House project in the 1960s – a hefty but fascinating machine called 'Pegasus', on display at the show.

V&A East project update

2016-04-21T12:02:00-04:00

A key part of the V&A’s expanding family of sites dedicated to the past, present and future of the designed world, V&A East is a brand new civic space and cultural destination that will form part of the Olympic legacy project taking shape at Stratford Waterfront.

The seven-storey building is being designed by award-winning architectural practice O’Donnell-Tuomey and is part of the masterplan developed with Allies and Morrison for the new educational and cultural district in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London. At 18,000 sq metres, V&A East will sit directly opposite Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre and adjacent to a group of partners with which the V&A has great creative synergy: Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion and UCL (University College London).

V&A East will be an entirely new kind of civic institution. At its core will be the ability and remit to respond quickly to current affairs, and to use objects, the V&A collection, collaborations and displays to in...

Utopian dreams; London's first Design Biennale reveals its opening theme

2016-03-25T13:11:00-04:00

London’s inaugural Design Biennale is set to open at Somerset House this September, based around the idea of Utopia to coincide with the venue’s year-long events programme. The biennale is headed up by London Design Festival director Ben Evans, biennale director Christopher Turner, former editor of Icon, and London Design Festival co-founder Sir John Sorrell. More than 30 countries are taking part in the event.

Representing the UK will be the design duo Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby best known for designing the London 2012 Olympic Games Torch and their work with Vitra. Their installation will be curated by London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

London's V&A to host a robot construction team this summer

2016-02-04T20:40:00-05:00

Robots will take over the courtyard of London’s V&A Museum this summer to build a pavilion inspired by flying beetles. The installation – designed by architect Achim Menges – features an undulating canopy of tightly woven carbon fibre cells, drawing on the shells of insects called elytra. Visitors will also be able to watch the robots in action over the course of the summer as they continue to add new sections to the evolving ‘Elytra Filament Pavilion’.

For more robo-news, check out these links:

Exhibition Explores the Design of Protest Movements

2014-08-18T15:26:00-04:00

In late May of 2012, my friends and I travelled up to Montreal from upstate New York for the first time, only vaguely aware of the escalating student demonstrations there. When we arrived, we found ourselves in a sea of red. The students we stayed with all had little red felt squares pinned to their shirts and gave us some. Their apartment overflowed with red pamphlets and posters. Plastered beneath overpasses and on bus stops, Paris ’68-inspired silk-screened posters – some by the collective École de la Montagne Rouge – served as a backdrop for the massive daily protests that shut down major arteries and overpasses. Students in the streets and their parents on porches loudly banged pots and pans, a chaotic orchestra playing the deafening casserole. It felt as if there was not a single square inch of the city that was not red: even the lights of traffic signals took on a revolutionary hue.

The students were protesting a planned gradual tuition raise of over one thousand dollars. As ...