The Victoria And Albert Museum has unveiled its new £54.5 million building project – complete with pink men’s loos.

Its additional entrance, courtyard and gallery space is the Victoria And Albert Museum’s largest architectural project in more than 100 years.

Both the men’s and women’s toilets at the world-famous museum, which celebrates its 165th anniversary this summer, are painted pink.

The men’s loos at the V&A (Sherna Noah/PA)

Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s new director, proudly showed off the baby changing table in the men’s loos.

He told the Press Association that he changed his mind over free entry to museums because he was not aware of the “economics”.

In an article in 2011, the then MP had suggested that the Government should “begin to think about reintroducing charges for our national museums”.

“When I wrote about entry prices to museums, that was in light of the challenges facing local authority museums and their funding models which still exist”, he told the Press Association.

Tristram Hunt showing off the men’s loos – complete with baby changing table (Sherna Noah/PA)

“But one week after I published that article, my neighbour now, Michael Dixon (director) of the Natural History Museum, wrote back (in a newspaper) and said the economics stack up for national museums, that the V&A has gone from 900,000 visitors when it charged to three million now, so not charging is good for us.”

Asked whether he must have known that when he stated his views, the former MP said: “Not in terms of those economics.”

“The V&A, when it first opened, had a very strong ethos about being open to the public so for three days a week it was fully open and for four days a week it charged.

“The reason it became fully accessible was because of the suffragettes, because they way they managed fears about the suffragettes breaking things was to have as many people here as possible.”

The Sackler Courtyard at the Victoria And Albert Museum (Lauren Hurley/PA)

He said that “free entry to our national museums” was now “part of the modern consensus”, but added: “We have to work closely with local authority museums to make sure they have the support we need.”

He also told the Press Association that the museum was reaching out to the local community in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.

“We are in South Kensington and there are challenges in North Kensington. We have responsibilities to those communities as neighbours,” Mr Hunt said.

“We work really with schools in north Kensington, the Lancaster Estate area. We’ve had a long history with community groups there who, in the light of recent events, we are making sure they know we are there for them and are supporting them.

Tristram Hunt (Yui Mok/PA)

“We have reached out with those groups which we’ve had a long history with and relationship with, so they know that we are there for them in the long term, the education, the outreach, working with young people,” he said.

Over £48 million of the £54.5 million project was raised from support from the likes of The Monument Trust, The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, The Headley Trust, The Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Heritage Lottery Fund and others.

He suggested that attracting donors was more difficult for the V&A than for modern art venues.

“It is more of a challenge for us as a museum of decorative and applied arts than arguably in the contemporary arts scene,” he said.

The Sackler Courtyard (Lauren Hurley/PA)

Friday’s opening of the Exhibition Road Quarter is being celebrated with a week-long public festival with floating sculptures, activated by the heat of the sun, and with Exhibition Road being pedestrianised for a day.

The entrance, on Exhibition Road, leads to a courtyard which has been paved in 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles inspired by the tradition of ceramics at the V&A.

New metal gates have been manufactured with a pattern of perforations tracing the imprint of the shrapnel damage from the Second World War on the stonework.