Most museums teach visitors how to behave with wall text and arrows. For V&A East Storehouse in London, the design studio Fieldwork Facility took a different route. It studied the apps that younger visitors already use every day and built the v&a east storehouse wayfinding around them.
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the Storehouse opens the V&A’s storage to the public. It holds 250,000 historic art, craft and design objects, according to Dezeen.
Readers curious about the wider field can browse Dezeen Awards 2026 architecture highlights, which spotlights the leading projects across EMEA.
The brief was to help visitors find their way through this collection and understand it, which goes beyond standard museum wayfinding. The V&A also asked for a space that would appeal to younger and more diverse audiences, including people who rarely visit museums.
Treating the building as software
Robin Howie, founder of Fieldwork Facility, said the studio set out to make the building feel intuitive from the moment a visitor walks in. “We studied popular Gen-Z apps and services to understand how to make Storehouse feel intuitive as soon as you walk through the door,” Howie told Dezeen.
Howie described a problem many visitors know well. Museums can feel closed to people who did not grow up with them. He pointed to the sense that a museum “isn’t really for me.” The studio wanted to remove that barrier.
The v&a east storehouse wayfinding system
The team treated the v&a east storehouse wayfinding as an operating system. Visitors begin with an onboarding text, a mixed-media introduction that explains the building and how to move through it. Howie said it works like a first launch. “It’s a moment that purposefully feels like opening an app for the first time where you are given a quick orientation of the experience held inside,” he said.
The onboarding text combines printed typography, ticker tape screens and recycled paper tiles. Recycled plastic letterforms sit on top of the tiles. Together they introduce three colours that mark different zones. Yellow points to viewing galleries. Green marks the viewable restoration labs. Pink marks the Study Centre, where the V&A’s Order an Object programme gives the public access to the collection. That service was once reserved for researchers and academics.
The paper tiles sit in aluminium cases. Each carries a single letter, much like a Scrabble tile. Museum staff can rearrange them to match the objects on view, so the signs change as the displays change. Howie said the system “looks and feels programmable in an analogue way.”
A typeface built for modular signs
Fieldwork Facility commissioned a bespoke monospaced version of Spiller, the V&A’s brand typeface. In a monospaced face, every letter occupies the same horizontal width. Designers usually reserve this approach for computer code. Here it allows each letter to sit on a separate tile in a fixed grid.
Howie said the result gives V&A East a voice that sets it apart from other museums. “The resulting Spiller Mono helps give V&A East its own unique language that is atypical for a museum,” he said. He also pointed to the history of the typeface style. Monospaced type appeared in early computers and remains standard for writing code, which suits the idea of a building run like software.
On some signs, an enamelled lava-stone disc carries the colour code. The discs repeat the yellow, green and pink from the onboarding text.
Other elements invite people to respond. Interpretation labels form a modular kit that clips onto Storehouse’s standard crates, palettes and forklift-accessible shelving. Digital templates let staff edit the labels without returning to the designers. Dedicated expression points let visitors share opinions with staff or join public polls using a voting coin system.
Howie said the approach welcomes everyone. “The operating system approach welcomes everyone to explore, define their own experience, make connections and have agency within a national institution,” he said.
Built to be taken apart
The v&a east storehouse wayfinding is meant to be reused. All of the museum’s signage was designed to be adapted and reused to cut out waste. The studio used recycled composite paper, recycled plastic and aluminium.
For another take on reuse in museum building, see Gent’s waste-brick Design Museum expansion that builds with 82,000 local waste bricks.
Fixed icons for toilets, lifts and floor numbers are screen printed or painted directly onto the walls. The studio avoided disposable vinyl decals for these elements, which cuts waste and leaves less to remove when signs change.
Fieldwork Facility’s v&a east storehouse wayfinding graphics are shortlisted for graphic design of the year at the 2026 Dezeen Awards. They compete against seven other projects, including the visual identity for Dorte Mandrup’s Arctic whale watching facility and ink-free tea packaging for a Song Dynasty-themed restaurant in Guangzhou. The shortlist places the Storehouse work among the strongest graphic projects of the year, but the real test sits in the galleries. The system works only if a visitor who has never read a museum label can walk in and know where to go next.
H/T dezeen.com
Frequently asked questions
What do the colours yellow, green and pink mark?
At V&A East Storehouse, yellow points to viewing galleries, green marks the viewable restoration labs, and pink marks the Study Centre. The Study Centre is where the V&A’s Order an Object programme gives the public access to the collection.
What is the onboarding text at V&A East Storehouse?
The onboarding text is a mixed-media introduction that explains the building and how to move through it. Designer Robin Howie compared it to opening an app for the first time, giving visitors a quick orientation to the experience inside.
Are the V&A East Storehouse signs designed to be reused?
Yes, all of the museum’s signage was designed to be adapted and reused to cut out waste. It was made from recycled composite paper, recycled plastic and aluminium, and fixed icons were screen printed or painted onto the walls instead of using disposable vinyl decals.
What typeface do the V&A East Storehouse signs use?
The signs use Spiller Mono, a bespoke monospaced version of Spiller, the V&A’s brand typeface. Monospaced type gives every letter the same width, which allows each letter to sit on a separate tile in a fixed grid.
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