The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. The QEH was built along with the smaller Purcell Room as part of Southbank Centre arts complex. It stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival of Britain of 1951, and the Hayward Gallery which opened in 1968.
History The QEH stands on the site of a former shot tower, built as part of a lead works in 1826 and retained for the Festival of Britain. The QEH and the Purcell Room were built together by Higgs and Hill and opened in March 1967. The venue was closed for two years of renovations in September 2015, and reopened in April 2018.
Description
The QEH has over 900 seats and the Purcell Room in the same building has 360 seats. The two auditoriums were designed by a team led by Hubert Bennett, head of the architects department of the Greater London Council, with Jack Whittle, F.G. West and Geoffrey Horsefall. They form part of the Southbank Centre arts complex along with the larger Royal Festival Hall (RFH) and an art gallery, the Hayward Gallery (opened in October 1968). The sculpture Zemran in stainless steel (by William Pye, 1972) stands on the riverside terrace of the QEH.
Architecture
Introduction The design of the QEH was intended to show to a high degree the separate masses and elements of the building, to avoid competing with the scale and presence of the RFH. The QEH uses minimal decoration and was designed to allow circulation at multiple levels around the building. The focus is primarily on the internal spaces, which as originally designed had very limited fenestration except for the (deeply inset) sweep along the river frontage of the foyer building. The original arrangements provided for circulation above and below the foyer (no longer allowed for security reasons, although the roof terrace has been opened for the Summer of Fun festival in 2011), right around the sides and rear of the two auditoriums, and also a bridge link to the Hayward Gallery. The powerful forms and austere materials are an example of brutalist architecture, and the design also highlights the plasticity of concrete.
Foyer
The foyer is at first-floor level, and the foyer building is supported on octagonal reinforced concrete columns, with an undercroft below, and is vee-shaped. The two arms of the vee-shape are linked to the QEH auditorium by cast concrete tubes, reminiscent of a spaceship's docking arrangement. The provision of only two entrances to the auditorium causes congestion and slow exit for audiences. This is also a consequence of the decision to place all the foyer facilities on a single level, even though there is a significant descent to the auditorium entrance level, and steps are required up to the Purcell Room level. The foyer is an irregular shape to accommodate the angle between the axes of Waterloo Bridge and the north-east side of the RFH. A notable feature of the QEH is the interior of the foyer building, with its intimate scale and subtle use of materials, and the terrace overlooking Queen's Walk. The original 1960s cool of this area had been largely lost owing to the intrusion of artificial partitions, to provide smaller areas for various activities by day as well as in the evening, in the 2000s. The extensive foyer was restored during the renovation works of 2016–18, with better integration of access for persons of reduced mobility. The bar area was extended to the south onto part of the external terrace with new glazing to bring more light into the foyer. The main entrance to the foyer is from walkway level near the north end of the terrace of the RFH. To see the intended effect this should be viewed head-on from the north corner of the RFH. The entrance, in brutalist style, is in the form of a horizontal slit in the concrete structure, with six pairs of cast aluminium doors. A smaller entrance is provided at ground level, originally intended to be for visitors set down by car (circulation of traffic under the Waterloo Bridge approach was possible before the Museum of the Moving Image building was constructed in the 1980s) or coming from the car park under the Hayward Gallery. This entrance also appears to have led to the undercroft, but that access is now blocked off. An internal staircase leads to the foyer level from this lower entrance, past the original box office area. Lavatories take up the south-east wall of the foyer building, and are housed in a structure extending out towards the centre access road.
The building's appearance works best by night, especially when approached from the eastern one of Golden Jubilee Footbridges beside Hungerford Bridge. After being closed for many years, the roof terrace and bridge to the Hayward Gallery were reopened in 2011, with the creation of a new external gallery and a roof garden and café, in partnership with the Eden Project in Cornwall. This reopened one of the most interesting pedestrian circulation possibilities of the original design. The roof terrace is reached by the external concrete staircase at the west corner on Queen's Walk near Festival Pier, which also leads to the lower level and the route to Festival Square. A crude disabled ramp, constructed of breeze blocks and bricks, has been added to the walkway between the QEH entrance and the Hayward Gallery.
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