“So, hang on. Is this… the actual entrance?” I said
“Yes” said Sam. “You’ve walked through it twice, I watched you, you just looked, sort of….. gobsmacked”
“I know” I said “but it is gobsmacking. All these optically mischievous glass tubes. Like entering a museum via a sci-fi transparent pasta curtain”
“ Exactly” said Sam, “I’m glad you noticed”, just a little bit irked, I think he’d been hoping for something better than ‘Transparent Pasta’.
Sam’s array of glass tube feels like he’s taken the pipettes from the Science Museum. The display Jars from The Natural History Museum. And The Glass from the V&A and fused them into some kind of cathedralic flux capacitor, generating an extraordinary genius loci. A simple, beautiful insight that conjures the intangible quality that this place place evokes, its history, and the feelings it stirs.
The tubes refract light and people in weird and lovely ways. It’s like walking into a kaleidoscope. But one that’s also deeply respectful of a Grade I listed building.
Happily, it’s functional! There’s new sliding doors. Bag check stations. A new front desk.
But even the ticket desk has a twist. By day, it’s where you get your map and cultural authority.
By night, it sells Negronis. With hidden compartments for cash drawers and printers.
“Sam”, I said “Is that legal?”
“Only in South Kensington” he said.
And then there are the toilets.
Yes. The toilets. Honestly. Crushed Wedgwood jasperware, 700 kilograms of it, turned into terrazzo panels. All those lovingly preserved artefacts upstairs, and here? Total ceramic carnage. It’s a kind of beautiful vandalism.
Sam said, “I was thinking, What if we smashed British heritage and made it fabulous?”
“It’s a sort of commentary on care, damage, and value. These broken bits of applied art, thrown out by the factory in Stoke, are now part of the bathroom. A bit perverse. But in a good way. How fragments of our cultural history turn up in remarkable and unexpected places”
Sam’s better at this description stuff than me, no pasta mentioned.
“Did you see life-sized figures in the cubicles?” Said Sam ” they’re digital prints from the V&A’s ceramic collection. Ideal for quiet contemplation”
“Quite intimate contemplation”, I thought
But seriously, it’s serious. Without being solemn. They’ve upgraded visitor infrastructure, doors, desks, loos, and made it convincingly architectural. They’ve proved that design belongs not just on the museum’s walls, but in its walls. That the V&A isn’t just a container of culture, but a participant in it.
I think it’s brilliant. It’s careful, clever, and funny. It respects the past by being confidently contemporary. And it reminds you, that museums aren’t just about preservation. They’re also about provocation.
Sam? Well Sam had wandered off, muttering something about pasta.
