The first detailed images have been released of plans for V&A East, to be built by the Victoria and Albert Museum at Olympicopolis, the former Olympic site in east London. Described by the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is overseeing Olympicopolis, as a “museum for the digital era”, the brick and glass façade of the planned museum building has a Cubist design, partly overhanging a public walkway.
The seven-storey V&A East building, designed by the London-based Allies and Morrison and Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey, will have 18,000 sq. m of space, and around half of this will be for galleries. In June, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington announced that it was dropping plans for a separate outpost in London, adjacent to V&A East. Instead it is opting for the considerably cheaper option of taking some gallery space in V&A East.
An outline planning application for V&A East, along with those for a new Sadler’s Wells dance theatre and a campus for the University of the Arts London, is due to be submitted to Newham Council in December. Total costs of the three projects are estimated at £850m. V&A East, which will show part of the museum’s permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, is scheduled to open in 2021.