Music
Complex decisions
Peter Phillips
With the publication of Richard Rogers's latest masterplan for the South Bank complex, the size of the task facing those responsible for the regeneration of those halls is becoming ever clearer. To put it another way, the degree to which 'one of Britain's finest and best loved post-war buildings' is failing to provide the nation's capital with 'European space to rival the best contemporary spaces of the Continent' (I quote from various of the handouts which rehearse the arguments for a major overhaul) has recently been admitted and addressed. Major it is going to be: assum- ing a completion date in 2001 the cost will be around £170 million. It is hoped that the Lottery will help.
For those not familiar with the problem, the Royal Festival Hall was built in 1951; the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room in 1967; the Hayward Gallery in 1968. The 1951 design of the RFH has long been held to be a masterpiece of the peri- od; but it was never completed in its origi- nal form, and by the time there was enough will to see it through, in 1964, Corbusier's ideas about concrete walkways had become the rage. Both the RFH and the other halls were enlarged or built according to these ideas, and, although in a certain sense the ensemble is now stylistically of a piece, the drabness of the concrete and the neo-bru- talist culture it spawned underneath itself has long been apparent. In addition there has been a problem with adapting these Sixties buildings to modern requirements. Apparently (I quote again) the RFH 'and its sister venues have opened their doors to an ever-expanding range of art forms: jazz, music-theatre, mime, art installations, Latin music, folk, rock, Big Band, ballet, Swing, Salsa, Blues, alternative comedy and performance poetry'. For the rest of us who have to do more traditional things in those spaces the standard facilities are no more than tolerable; and the sound in the QEH should, in my opinion, never have got off the drawing-board. The main restriction on Rogers is that he cannot knock down the QEH, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery: this is held to be politically impossible. Yet he is required, within certain constraints, to remake the 1951 RFH in its original pre- concrete walk image. Quite apart from what one thinks of the 1960s buildings (and I've heard few kind words in recent years about either their interiors or their exteri- ors), the relative harmony of intent which informs the Centre at the moment is likely to be lost.
This is particularly testing in the matter of returning the main entrance of the RFH to its original location on Belvedere Road (the eastern side; not the waterfront as it became in 1964, thereby causing the interi- or spaces and staircases to be set at vari- ance with the overall design). In 1951 there was a gap on the other side of Belvedere Road; now there is the QEH. It is assumed in Rogers's plans that the walkways in that area will be destroyed, but one wonders whether those attractive mock-ups of Belvedere Road as it will be, with shopping malls, gleaming metal escalators and 'semi- mature Honey Locust trees to reinforce and define the spaces' can tell quite the whole story. They require a considerable leap of faith.
The RFH will be restored; the rest of the site will be covered over with a transparent canopy, made of 'an assembly of modular steel prefabricated components' which will distract attention from what sits under- neath it, and enable the result to be termed the Crystal Palace. At the same time it is intended that all the surroundings of the RFH should be reconstructed, from the approach by river, to the removal of the entire upper-level access; from the destruc- tion of the extra storage buildings which later came to distort the shape of the origi- nal design, to a speedier route to the Waterloo Eurostar terminal. If all this is allowed to happen, and all the internal alterations are carried out with the same flair, there can be little doubt that the new Crystal Palace will become an exciting place to visit.
Much of the inspiration for the South Bank overhaul has come from continental models. Nicholas Snowman, the chief exec- utive of the SBC, has referred to the merits of the 'welcoming piazza' of the Pompidou centre 'tempting passers-by as well as dedi- cated audiences to cultural feasts, as in Siena's ancient city square'. There are fre- quent mentions in Snowman's plans of cre- ating spaces for shops, bars, restaurants and informal performance locations. And, indeed, walking by the Pompidou this last weekend, I heard four busking groups sep- arately but simultaneously entertaining large crowds. Can this continental vision work in London or will it transfer, as the brasserie culture has transferred, as a more or less exact imitation which nonetheless always feels to me to be slightly sterile? The British have a long history of arresting buskers.
It is crucial that the South Bank project realises as many of its ambitions as it can, the most important result of which should be that the British people feel comfortable there. This presupposes an atmosphere subtly balanced between elements at once glamorous and familiar. It is hopeful that Richard Rogers and Nicholas Snowman, with their varied experiences of both sides of the Channel, would seem to be an ideal pair to realise this.
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