Royal Festival Hall
Encyclopedia
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London
. It is situated on the South Bank
of the River Thames
, not far from Hungerford Bridge
. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected (in April 1988). The London Philharmonic Orchestra
and Philharmonia Orchestra
s perform the majority of their London concerts in the hall.
The hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain
by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts
for London County Council
, and was officially opened on 3 May 1951. When the Greater London Council
(LCC's successor) was abolished in 1986, the Hall was taken over by the Arts Council
. Since the late 1980s the hall has operated an 'open foyers' policy, opening up the substantial foyer spaces to the public throughout the day, even if there are no performances. This has proved very popular and the foyers are now one of the best used public spaces in London.
Each year Southbank Centre puts on a festival known as "Meltdown"
. In 2010 the festival was curated by Richard Thompson and featured events across the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
The closest tube
stations are Waterloo
and Embankment
.
, then Prime Minister, on the site of the former Lion Brewery, built in 1837. The original plan was that Arturo Toscanini
would conduct the opening concerts, but he was unwell, and the inaugural concerts were conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
and Sir Adrian Boult
. The hall was the venue for the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest
, hosted by Katie Boyle
. The first general manager was T E Bean who contributed greatly to the early success of the Festival Hall.
The hall's design is unashamedly Modernist, the Festival's commissioning architect
(Hugh Casson
) having taken the decision to appoint only young architects. It was designed by Leslie Martin
, Robert Matthew
and Peter Moro from the LCC's Architects' Department; Martin was just 39 when he was appointed to lead the design team in late 1948. Martin designed the structure as an 'egg in a box', a term he used to describe the separation of the curved auditorium space from the surrounding building and the noise and vibration of the adjacent railway viaduct. Sir Thomas Beecham
used similar imagery, calling the building a 'giant chicken coop'.
The building was substantially altered in 1964 by adding the foyers and terraces to the river side of the building and more dressing rooms to the rear. Alterations to the facades facing the river removed the playful Scandinavian Modernism
of the building's primary public face in favour of a plainer and hard-edged style. The building's original entrance sequence was much compromised by these changes and the later additions of raised concrete walkways around the building to serve the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hall
, Purcell Room
and The Hayward, built in 1967/8 and also part of Southbank Centre.
The building underwent a substantial renovation between 2005 and 2007 led by Allies and Morrison
Architects aimed at improving the poor acoustics (which Simon Rattle
said made performers 'lose the will to live'), production access and flexibility of the auditorium and the general quality of fabric, entrance spaces and cafe and the layouts of the foyers. The interior of the concert hall space was almost entirely intact until this re-modelling, which saw its stage canopy and walls rebuilt in plainer more rectangular forms. This was carried out in the face of opposition from conservationists, led by the Twentieth Century Society. While musicians report improvements in their own experience of the acoustic from the stage perspective, some audience members report disappointment that renovations have failed to improve the acoustics of the hall, largely due to conservation imperatives which are noted by the acoustic developers.
A row of seven shop/catering units has been added on the river side of the hall (with offices upstairs) and the section of the riverside walk next to these was improved. This has released space inside the original building which had been used for shops. The hall officially reopened to the public in June 2007 with a concert by the heavy metal
band Motörhead, opening Jarvis Cocker
's Meltdown
. The refurbishment is expected to cost in the region of £91 million. A film has been made documenting the refurbishment, entitled This Is Tomorrow; it is directed by Paul Kelly
and produced by Andrew Hinton. The soundtrack was composed by the band Saint Etienne
who performed it at the film's première in the Festival Hall.
A large head and shoulders bust of Nelson Mandela
(by Ian Walters
, 1985) stands on the walkway between the hall and Hungerford Bridge
approach viaduct. Originally made in glass-fibre it was repeatedly vandalised until re-cast in bronze. Skateboarders, who have congregated since the 1980s in the undercroft of the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hall
(considered to be London's most iconic skateboarding area) and now constitute a notable feature of the Southbank Centre, may soon be moved on if this area of the centre is redeveloped.
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. It is situated on the South Bank
South Bank
South Bank is an area of London, England located immediately adjacent to the south side of the River Thames. It forms a long and narrow section of riverside development that is within the London Borough of Lambeth to the border with the London Borough of Southwark and was formerly simply known as...
of the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
, not far from Hungerford Bridge
Hungerford Bridge
The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. It is a steel truss railway bridge—sometimes known as the Charing Cross Bridge—flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's...
. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected (in April 1988). The London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
and Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra
The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...
s perform the majority of their London concerts in the hall.
The hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain
Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...
by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts
Holland, Hannen & Cubitts
Holland, Hannen & Cubitts was a major building firm responsible for many of the great buildings of London.-History:It was formed from the fusion of two well-established building houses that had competed throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century but came together in 1883: this was...
for London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
, and was officially opened on 3 May 1951. When the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
(LCC's successor) was abolished in 1986, the Hall was taken over by the Arts Council
Arts council
An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...
. Since the late 1980s the hall has operated an 'open foyers' policy, opening up the substantial foyer spaces to the public throughout the day, even if there are no performances. This has proved very popular and the foyers are now one of the best used public spaces in London.
Each year Southbank Centre puts on a festival known as "Meltdown"
Meltdown (festival)
Meltdown is an annual, English festival, held in London, featuring a mix of music, art, performance and film. Meltdown is held in June at Southbank Centre, the arts complex covering and including the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and The Hayward...
. In 2010 the festival was curated by Richard Thompson and featured events across the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
The closest tube
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
stations are Waterloo
Waterloo station
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. The station is owned and operated by Network Rail and is close to the South Bank of the River Thames, and in Travelcard Zone 1....
and Embankment
Embankment tube station
Embankment is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster, known by various names during its history. It is served by the Circle, District, Northern and Bakerloo lines. On the Northern and Bakerloo lines, the station is between Waterloo and Charing Cross stations; on the Circle and...
.
History
The foundation stone was laid in 1949 by Clement AttleeClement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
, then Prime Minister, on the site of the former Lion Brewery, built in 1837. The original plan was that Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
would conduct the opening concerts, but he was unwell, and the inaugural concerts were conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
and Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
. The hall was the venue for the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union .Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition...
, hosted by Katie Boyle
Katie Boyle
Katie Boyle is an Italian-born British actress, television personality, and game show panelist, well known for appearing on TV panel games such as What's My Line? and for presenting the Eurovision Song Contest in the 1960s and 1970s....
. The first general manager was T E Bean who contributed greatly to the early success of the Festival Hall.
The hall's design is unashamedly Modernist, the Festival's commissioning architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
(Hugh Casson
Hugh Casson
Sir Hugh Maxwell Casson, KCVO, RA, RDI, was a British architect, interior designer, artist, and influential writer and broadcaster on 20th century design. He is particularly noted for his role as director of architecture at the 1951 Festival of Britain on London's South Bank.Casson's family...
) having taken the decision to appoint only young architects. It was designed by Leslie Martin
Leslie Martin
Sir John Leslie Martin KBE was an English Architect. A leading advocate of the International Style....
, Robert Matthew
Robert Matthew
Sir Robert Hogg Matthew, OBE, FRIBA was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism.- Early life & studies :Robert Matthew was the son of John Matthew . He was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and attended the Edinburgh College of Art.- Career :Robert was apprenticed with his...
and Peter Moro from the LCC's Architects' Department; Martin was just 39 when he was appointed to lead the design team in late 1948. Martin designed the structure as an 'egg in a box', a term he used to describe the separation of the curved auditorium space from the surrounding building and the noise and vibration of the adjacent railway viaduct. Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
used similar imagery, calling the building a 'giant chicken coop'.
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
of the building's primary public face in favour of a plainer and hard-edged style. The building's original entrance sequence was much compromised by these changes and the later additions of raised concrete walkways around the building to serve the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
, Purcell Room
Purcell Room
The Purcell Room is a concert and performance venue which forms part of the Southbank Centre, one of central London's leading cultural complexes. It is named after the 17th century English composer Henry Purcell and has 370 seats....
and The Hayward, built in 1967/8 and also part of Southbank Centre.
The building underwent a substantial renovation between 2005 and 2007 led by Allies and Morrison
Allies and Morrison
Allies and Morrison is a London-based architectural practice founded by Bob Allies and Graham Morrison in 1984. The practice is now headed up by 10 Partners and employs around 210 people in their purpose designed studios at 85 Southwark Street...
Architects aimed at improving the poor acoustics (which Simon Rattle
Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic ....
said made performers 'lose the will to live'), production access and flexibility of the auditorium and the general quality of fabric, entrance spaces and cafe and the layouts of the foyers. The interior of the concert hall space was almost entirely intact until this re-modelling, which saw its stage canopy and walls rebuilt in plainer more rectangular forms. This was carried out in the face of opposition from conservationists, led by the Twentieth Century Society. While musicians report improvements in their own experience of the acoustic from the stage perspective, some audience members report disappointment that renovations have failed to improve the acoustics of the hall, largely due to conservation imperatives which are noted by the acoustic developers.
A row of seven shop/catering units has been added on the river side of the hall (with offices upstairs) and the section of the riverside walk next to these was improved. This has released space inside the original building which had been used for shops. The hall officially reopened to the public in June 2007 with a concert by the heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
band Motörhead, opening Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
's Meltdown
Meltdown (festival)
Meltdown is an annual, English festival, held in London, featuring a mix of music, art, performance and film. Meltdown is held in June at Southbank Centre, the arts complex covering and including the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and The Hayward...
. The refurbishment is expected to cost in the region of £91 million. A film has been made documenting the refurbishment, entitled This Is Tomorrow; it is directed by Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (film maker)
Paul Kelly is an English film director, musician, photographer and designer.-Music:The son of an RAF fighter pilot - he took up flying aged fourteen, making his first solo flight on his seventeenth birthday. However, a passion for music and electric guitars eventually led him to follow a musical...
and produced by Andrew Hinton. The soundtrack was composed by the band Saint Etienne
Saint Etienne (band)
Saint Etienne are an English Pop group comprising Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. They are named after the French football team AS Saint-Étienne.-History:Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs were childhood friends and former music journalists...
who performed it at the film's première in the Festival Hall.
A large head and shoulders bust of Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
(by Ian Walters
Ian Walters
Ian Homer Walters was an English sculptor.Born in Solihull, Walters was educated at Yardley Grammar school and under William Bloye at the Birmingham School of Art...
, 1985) stands on the walkway between the hall and Hungerford Bridge
Hungerford Bridge
The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. It is a steel truss railway bridge—sometimes known as the Charing Cross Bridge—flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's...
approach viaduct. Originally made in glass-fibre it was repeatedly vandalised until re-cast in bronze. Skateboarders, who have congregated since the 1980s in the undercroft of the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
(considered to be London's most iconic skateboarding area) and now constitute a notable feature of the Southbank Centre, may soon be moved on if this area of the centre is redeveloped.
External links
- Southbank Centre website (Bookings for RFH, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and The Hayward)
- Fluid Structures (Engineers for the new entrance canopies)
- Allies and Morrison website (Architects of 2003-7 upgrades)
- The Guardian of 13 October 1949 on the laying of the foundation stone
- http://www.flickr.com/groups/southbankcentre/ (A Flickr group dedicated to pictures of the Southbank Centre)