Queen Elizabeth Hall

The Queen Elizabeth Hall stands on the South Bank in London, beside the Thames. It is part of the Southbank Centre arts complex, alongside the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery. The building opened in 1967 with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. It was designed to host classical, jazz and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. The hall and the smaller Purcell Room were built together by Higgs and Hill. The site once held a shot tower built in 1826 for a lead works. The hall is recognised for its excellent acoustics, judged of ‘general excellence’ in 1968 by critics and engineers. The reverberation time can be adjusted by opening and closing cavities in vertical wood panels. The ceiling rises 7.6 metres above the highest seats, contributing to a ‘singing’ tone. Recent alterations have expanded the platform and lighting for dance and comedy, though this has affected the acoustics. The building’s brutalist style uses powerful concrete forms and minimal decoration. A stainless-steel sculpture, Zemran by William Pye, stands on the riverside terrace. Inside, the foyer is at first-floor level, supported by octagonal concrete columns and shaped like a vee. It links to the auditorium by concrete tubes reminiscent of a spaceship’s docking bays. The foyer overlooks Queen’s Walk and was restored between 2016 and 2018. A bar area now extends onto the terrace with new glazing. The main entrance is a horizontal slit in the concrete structure, with aluminium doors. The roof terrace and bridge to the Hayward Gallery reopened in 2011, adding an external gallery and café. The auditorium itself is a separate building, aligned with Waterloo Bridge, with a cantilevered seating area.