Award-winning Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey’s sculptural Victoria and Albert Museum …
East London’s Stratford was once the industrial heartland for the south of England but by the late 20th century the area’s prosperity was in deep decline. Much-needed regeneration came from Stratford’s hosting of the 2012 London Olympic Games, which saw the constructing of infrastructure for over 10,500 athletes, including London Stadium and Zaha Hadid’s iconic London Aquatic Centre. To prevent the area from going into post-Olympic decline, the ‘Olympicopolis’ legacy plan was put in place. Representing the biggest ever cultural financial investment by the Mayor of London, the masterplan envisaged a new cultural quarter at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
John Tuomey and Sheila O’Donnell receive the RIAI Gandon Medal for lifetime achievement in 2025.
By coincidence, Irish architect Sheila O’Donnell spotted a notice for the ‘Olympicopolis’ masterplan competition in the Evening Standard, while on a final site visit to their London School of Economics (LSE) Student Centre in 2014. “We immediately thought this is something we could do,” recalls O’Donnell. Her practice, O’Donnell + Tuomey, which she founded with John Tuomey, had contributed to the regeneration of Temple Bar, and won a competition for a large educational campus on a World Heritage site in central Budapest. They had also made their mark in London with the Photographers’ Gallery and the LSE Student Centre. For the competition they joined forces with London Architects, Allies and Morrison and Girona studio, Arquitecturia Camps Felip, and beat 125 practices from around the world.
John Tuomey believes that it was the team’s shared emphasis on the “civic aspects of the project including a south-facing terrace with foyers of the new buildings opening towards the park”, that won them the day: “Our design introduces a delayed threshold or sense of in-between, the idea of shared space between the inner workings of buildings and the world outside.”
Since the early days of the practice, O’Donnell + Tuomey have celebrated the ‘inbetween’. Visitors to the Irish Film Institute in Dublin enjoy the dramatic roof-lit atrium that links all three cinemas with bar, café and box office. The elevated podium of The Glucksman in Cork serves as threshold between university campus and art gallery. In the Lyric Theatre, Belfast social spaces with views of the River Lagan flow around the enclosed forms of the auditorium, studio and rehearsal rooms. Their contextual and human-centred work has won them the RIAI Gandon Medal for lifetime achievement in 2025 and the RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture in 2015, among other accolades.
Spanish fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga’s use of the Japanese concept of “Ma”, or “the space in between”, was an important influence on the design for V&A East, the outer skin of the building acting as a three-dimensional “folding dress”, lending the museum a distinctive form.
Twelve years on and the original masterplan is reaching completion, including homes for BBC Music Studios and London College of Fashion, UAL. The area is now called ‘East Bank’ and O’Donnell + Tuomey are delivering a large housing project, The Prow, and two landmark cultural buildings. Last February, they completed Sadler’s Wells East, a redbrick 500-seat dance theatre with rehearsal studios, café, and bar. In April, their sculptural V&A East Museum opened its doors to the public. When viewed from across the river, the two cultural buildings emerge as distinct characters on this new urban stage.
What inspired the buildings’ different expressions? According to John Tuomey, this is down to their functional programme: “The dance theatre and studios demand rectilinear spaces of fixed dimensions, so the design derives its expression from the rhythmic arrangement of parts. For the V&A East Museum, we proposed a folding overcoat concept, protecting the interior contents at the same time as projecting the identity of the museum across the Olympic Park,” says Tuomey. Common to both projects, however, is “their sense of invitation to public participation”, says Sheila O’Donnell. “In Sadler’s Wells, the foyers are considered social living rooms, in the V&A they are an extension of the public realm.” O’Donnell + Tuomey worked with a team of landscape designers at LDA to ensure that the steps and ramps, terraces and dance platforms provide welcoming places for people to gather. There are covered spaces to shelter from the elements and long benches to enjoy the view of the park. The architects are delighted to see so many students from the nearby London College of Fashion sitting out on the steps in the sunshine, and to watch people strolling along the podium between our buildings. “We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to participate in such a civic-minded project,” says John Tuomey.
Both cultural institutions have also actively reached out to the local communities, many from deprived areas in Stratford and the neighbouring four boroughs, to ensure they avail from the cultural opportunities on their doorstep. Above the entrance of Sadler’s Wells are bright-red neon letters that say, “You Are Welcome”.
What can visitors expect to see? “The museum is arranged over five levels, and the key architectural idea is for a flowing sequence of circulation spaces, wide stairs with generous landings, to create a feeling of public promenade across all five levels, with resting points to look out windows along the way,” explains John Tuomey. The central focus will be three floors of exhibition spaces with installations by different designers, but the architects have also designed museum shops and a café that will open out onto the waterfront square. The most dramatic experience, however, will be revealed on the top floor where O’Donnell + Tuomey created a special events space with a roof terrace overlooking the park. Visitors will not only appreciate from here the extensive regeneration of a post-industrial area but the significant contribution of an Irish practice to the transformation of a post-Olympic site into a vibrant cultural quarter.
Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey will discuss the design ideas behind V&A East and other key projects in their talk on September 20 during Design Week Dublin.
