V&A East Opens: A Museum Shaped by Couture
The most interesting new building in London this year is one that borrows its logic from fashion. The V&A East Museum, designed by Dublin- and London-based practice O’Donnell + Tuomey, opened on April 18 in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park — and it is, by any measure, a remarkable piece of civic architecture. What makes it genuinely distinctive, however, is the conceptual framework from which it emerged: the sculptural tailoring of Cristóbal Balenciaga and the Japanese spatial concept of Ma. Most museums begin with a brief about square footage, circulation, and climate control. This one, by the architects’ own account, began with the question of how a Spanish couturier shaped the air around a body, and what a building might learn from that. ...