Banking on the future
Nicholas Snowman on the changing face of the Royal Festival Hall Iremember, as a very small boy, being taken to the Festival of Britain. Others recall the sense of excitement, the new shapes and colours and the extraordinary new inventions. But for me, it was the Sky- ion, that 300-foot high marvel hovering above the crowds which summed up the wonder of the new age. (I always experi- ence something of that sense of exhilara- tion in Wagner's Lohengrin as the grail descends and recedes into infinity ... ) The year was 1951 and the Festival set out to raise war-weary spirits in a real moment of post-war optimism.
Something of that atmosphere was cap- tured for me a couple of months ago when we were hosts, with the 20th Century Soci- ety, at a symposium which traced the life and times of the Royal Festival Hall, the sole surviving building of the Festival. Lis- tening to those who were personally involved with the building of the hall was like taking a trip through time. As the story unfolded, from the first tentative plans made by the London County Council in 1949, it was suddenly possible to see in microcosm the philosophies and beliefs which shaped the architecture of our cities during the Fifties and Sixties.
The Royal Festival Hall was built along the clean-cut, airy lines of what was called the Swedish style. From inside, it still reminds me of a huge ocean liner, with its balconies and terraces looking across the wide sweep of the river; while the 10,000- ton auditorium sits, apparently miraculous- ly suspended, above your head. It was a = and your prayers should be sent to "godll:ihs.org".' million miles away from the plush mahogany, leather and velvet of the tradi- tional concert hall.
On the opening night of 3 May 1951, workmen could still be seen hastily tidying away building materials. There was a startling lack of backstage and office accommodation and there are still some indications of hasty construction behind the scenes: the showers, designed originally to open into the dressing rooms, were built the wrong way round and require perform- ers to step, clad in towels, directly into the corridor; a source of much mirth for visit- ing companies.
By 1957, there had been a change in architectural attitudes. From Sir Leslie Martin's inspired 'egg in the box' design (with its suspended auditorium), it was felt that there should be 'more box' from which the egg could rise. One of the new team brought in was Robert Maxwell, now pro- fessor of architecture at Princeton Univer- sity. In the space of six years, the GLC's architecture department had become gripped by a tougher, more Corbusian taste. 'We all believed in walkways then,' Robert Maxwell said, taking the sympo- sium through the Royal Festival Hall's sec- ond incarnation, adding, 'only later did I find that Corbusier's ideas on town plan- ning were completely mad.'
It was at this point, in the early 1960s, that the philosophies and plans for new buildings on the site began to cloud the clarity which had informed the original plans. Leslie Martin had drawn up propos- als for the modifications, but these were overturned and the design which was final- ly built moved the building through 180 degrees to face the river, with entrances at the level of the new walkways. There was always something slightly odd about the building, I felt. Suddenly, it was obvious: all the staircases had ended up facing away from instead of towards the front door.
In the early 1990s, we realised that there was an unmistakably shabby feel to our sur- roundings, and began to make modest improvements. People commented that the building was looking, well, better: floors were polished, paintwork was painted bril- liant white, old light fittings were over- hauled, brass was polished. We cleared much of the clutter from the foyers and restored the original transparency.
We have just submitted our bid for Lot- tery funding both to build the Crystal Palace scheme with its undulating glass canopy and to continue the renovation and acoustic enhancement of the Royal Festival Hall. For our three and a half million visi- tors annually, we hope we are becoming more and more what Richard Rogers calls a 'People's Place' — not just a functional venue for music and dance but a stylish, national landmark, worthy of its role as the home of great performance at the heart of Europe's largest arts complex.
Nicholas Snowman is SBC's chief executive.
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