The walk from Covent Garden Tube Station to the north end of Waterloo Bridge takes about ten minutes, passing straight through the market and down the narrow stairs, reaching the Victoria Embankment Gardens. Stopping on the north riverside to take in the view of the south bank is a wonderful route, before going up the steps next to Somerset House. Experiencing the architecture of the Southbank Centre and the National Theatre from a distance allows the user to comprehend the buildings better, and just be awed by them; they rightfully steal the spotlight from the London Eye. While the Royal Festival Hall is more subdued in the view, the National Theatre, with its concrete terraces, certainly deserves the attention. The Waterloo Bridge has walkways to connect the user to this cultural area (to the National Theatre on multiple levels). Arriving on the south bank purposefully or to just kill some time is a delightful experience for Londoners. The journey culminates on the most vibrant area of south bank, the start of the south side of the river.
Evolving from an industrial area to the cultural hub of London, the south bank of River Thames can be perceived as a vast public space from the east end to the west, speckled prominently with cultural buildings with an uninterrupted pedestrian route on the riverside. Until the 1950s, it has seen various establishments and gone through two world wars. Following the Blitz, it, and the public, were in need of reviving and the Festival of Britain was conceived just in time. After many changes throughout the years; the original Festival of Britain area, including Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges (with the fairly recent addition of two pedestrian walkways), is connected to the city centre stronger than ever. Today, the node contains the Southbank Centre and the National Theatre; additionally, a significant tourist attraction, the London Eye. The footprint in a day in the area is enormous, with people coming to attend events or just to spend time in public spaces. While both have impressive theatres, the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre are also known for their frequented public interiors that connect with the riverside, and are open all day.
Most public spaces in Turkey have restricted use. People are not allowed to sunbathe, to eat on the lawn, or spend time in a public cultural building when they are not attending an event. There are security guards everywhere telling people off and shooing them away from these spaces, even if the area is designed for such public use. However, these basic rights are embedded in the culture of Europeans and the British, with many examples of public space all around the land. Doxa explains that public foyers evolve into casual areas to dwell in during the day, rather than just being used for transitioning from the urban setting to halls or theaters, with the administration of cultural buildings making an effort to transform these spaces (2001, p. 1). In becoming so, they manifest urban qualities, such as “co-presence with strangers and randomness of encounter”; this is an indication of the architecture’s sway over user interrelations, with accessibility and visibility playing large roles (Doxa, 2001, pp. 1-2). The Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre have such spaces; they have specific programs for their buildings, but are also well integrated with their surroundings, and intentionally let people use the interior foyers for their liking. Although they both do this, their approach in design, and the experiences of the user vary. This essay will analyse the social inclusion and permeability of public spaces of the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre, also looking at how these buildings’ designs affect a person’s experience of space and location; detailing an individual walkthrough and complementing the findings with ideas such as Jane Jacobs’ approach to urban space, Le Corbusier’s promenade and the space syntax theory.
The Royal Festival Hall (RFH) is a concert hall completed in 1951 by Sir Leslie Martin and Sir Robert Matthew, commissioned by London County Council. Its conception and development is depicted in Mullins’ retrospective of the Southbank Centre (2007). At the time, London was in dire need of an event to lift people’s spirits after the devastating consequences of WWII. The Festival of Britain was organised by the authorities on the area west of the Waterloo Bridge, where they held the South Bank Exhibition. The buildings were commissioned to a range of young architects, with the designs resulting in “light, transparent structures with cantilevered balconies” organised asymmetrically on the site (Mullins, 2007, p. 49). Social inclusion was an aim of the project from the start, with the site divided by the Hungerford Bridge into ‘The Land’ and ‘The People’. The RFH was built upon the latter as the most prominent building there. In 1952, after the exhibition, the rest of the site was removed. The RFH itself was a beam of light in the dark times of the era for the people who had access (only concertgoers were admitted), and they tended to linger in the foyers after concerts. The ‘Open Foyer’ program started in 1983 and the foyers were accessible in the daytime by the public (Mullins, 2007, p. 121). After a massive refurbishment in 2005, when new additions such as chain restaurants, cafes, and shops placed in the immediate surroundings of the building; the concert hall reopened in 2007 (Mullins, 2007).
The auditorium of the RFH is raised in the building, leaving interconnected vast foyers and supporting spaces around and beneath it. This creates an open public space inside, accessible from all façades. Nikolaus Pevsner noted the public foyers as “a freedom and intricacy of flow, in their own way as thrilling as what we see in the Baroque churches of Germany and Austria” (1952, p. 276, cited in Forty, 2001, p. 204), and Adrian Forty agrees. In the foyer, one can move in each direction of this unitary continuous volume as they would in a baroque church (Forty, 2001, p. 204). The concept was meant to be democratic. With five levels around the auditorium that can be reached by a minimal circulation design, the building is extremely accessible. Besides the elevators, there are symmetrical staircases on the north and south sides, that take people up to various levels of the foyers and the auditorium. The user is always conscious of the auditorium from the public areas, it gently implies that it is there (London County Council, 1951, p. 47). The underbelly of the auditorium can be observed in the main foyer. The public promenades are vast, the user always has their personal space. Forty’s experience supports this feeling, he argues that once the user goes inside, the space belongs to him/her, and this applies to every user, creating equality of ownership (2001, pp. 208-209). The design has “provided the opportunity for the individual subject to enjoy the illusion of his or her own ‘equal social worth’ through the view of others engaged in the identical act” (Forty, 2001, p. 210). The intent of social inclusion in the Festival of Britain has most certainly emerged in the RFH. Later additions on the south bank, including other buildings of the Southbank Centre, enhance this idea, although in contrasting ways.
After the addition of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery in 1967 (which are currently closed due to a two-year refurbishment) (Fig. 1), it was time for the National Theatre (NT) to be built at last, after a long bout of delays and cancellations of the project for another auditorium on the south bank (Calder, 2016, pp. 277-284). Designed by Denys Lasdun, the NT contains two large theatres; the Olivier and the Lyttelton, the former placed higher than the latter, with their axes at 45 degrees (Girouard, 1977, p. 6). It also has a smaller theatre, the Dorfman. Girouard lays out the essentials of the architecture;
“The basic units are the four concrete trays that mark each level, inside and out, the board-shaped concrete columns that support the trays, and the staircases that join them. The basic materials are carpeting, glass and concrete, the latter coffered in the trays and board-marked in the walls; at night the board-marking is lit in relief by lights set in the floor, so that the concrete acquires a texture that looks something between canvas and fur, and is caressing rather than cold. The basic strategy is to join layer to layer, and space to space, not just by breaking through the trays, but also by constantly making small apertures through other elements, to give unexpected views into the adjacent spaces” (1977, p. 6).
The initial reactions to the building was negative, but the public appeared to like it more than the critics. A visitor enjoyed the fortifying foyers and the material choices, and Lasdun was grateful for it (Calder, 2016, p. 322). The NT has been refurbished recently, with a new centre added on the south side, and glass façades to parts of the foyers.
As Pevsner did with baroque churches for the RFH, Amery compares the NT with Greek theatres: “In the same way that the Greeks manipulated their hillsides for theatres, Lasdun has manipulated a piece of cityscape into a building for drama” (1977, p. 69). He is correct, the building takes the city inside masterfully. The user climbs in the building and goes out to the terraces for various views, it is like climbing a hill to reach the acropolis. “It is an architecture without façades but with layers of building, like geological strata, connected in such a way that they flow into the surrounding riverscape and city” Lasdun says of his creation (1977, cited in Curtis, 1977, p. 11). Interestingly, Calder has seen influences from baroque theaters in the NT, observable especially in Olivier Theatre’s axial symmetry; the foyers’ organisation is reminiscent of Paris’ Opera Garnier, while the outer terraces, basic lift towers and the fly tower indicate where the stage is situated. Also, the promenade that climbs to the auditorium is augmented by the protruding staircase on the riverside, which acts as a majestic entrance (2016, p. 325). As described in the Architectural Review special issue, the terraces, the main feature of the design, are shaped according to function, interiors and perspectives of the city; they realise the connection with the city while assisting the program inside. The public areas are receded from the river, and the terraces mimic this decision. Interior galleries project upwards for up to three levels at certain places, exposing the spatial layering and repeating this on the decks (Curtis, 1977, p. 18-21). Girouard compares the foyers of the theatres to caves, where everything happens. People can gaze out the openings or step out on the terraces to get views of the city that differ in range and proportions (1977, p. 5).
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This paper was originally titled “Social Inclusion and Permeability in South Bank: Public Spaces of The Royal Festival Hall and The National Theatre” written for the module Architecture in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain.
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