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The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London, England.
It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I listed building, the first post-war building to become so protected in 1981.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the London Sinfonietta, Chineke! and Aurora are resident orchestras at Southbank Centre.
The hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain for London County Council, and was officially opened on 3 May 1951. When the LCC's successor, the Greater London Council, was abolished in 1986, the Festival Hall was taken over by the Arts Council, and managed together with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room (opened 1967) and the Hayward Gallery (1968), eventually becoming an independent arts organisation, now known as the Southbank Centre, in April 1998.
The complex includes several reception rooms, bars and restaurants, and the Clore Ballroom, accommodating up to 440 for a seated dinner. A large head and shoulders bust of Nelson Mandela by Ian Walters, created in 1985, stands on the walkway between the hall and Hungerford Bridge approach viaduct. The sculpture was originally made of fibreglass until re-cast in bronze.
The complex's variety of open spaces and foyers are popular for social or work-related meetings.
The closest tube stations are Waterloo and, across the river via the Jubilee Bridges, Embankment and Charing Cross.
The Festival Hall project was led by London County Council's then chief architect, Robert Matthew, who gathered around him a young team of talented designers including Leslie Martin, who was eventually to lead the project with Edwin Williams and Peter Moro, along with the furniture designer Robin Day and his wife, the textile designer Lucienne Day. The acoustical consultant was Hope Bagenal, working with members of the Building Research Station; Henry Humphreys, Peter Parkin and William Allen. Martin was 39 at the time, and very taken with the Nordic activities of Alvar Aalto and Gunnar Asplund.
The figure who really drove the project forward was Herbert Morrison, a Labour Party politician. It was he who had insisted that Matthew had Martin as his deputy architect, treating the Festival Hall as a special project.
As a structure, the new Festival Hall was technically stretched, and maintenance was soon required. The building was substantially altered in 1964 by adding the foyers and terraces to the river side of the building, extending the footprint by 30 ft, and more dressing rooms to the rear. Alterations to the façades overlooking the river removed the decorative tiles, altering the 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.
More information: Southbank Centre
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life;
for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
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