Queen Elizabeth Hall
| Queen Elizabeth Hall | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Type | Concert hall |
| Architectural style | Brutalist |
| Address | Belvedere Road |
| Town or city | London, SE1 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Opened | March 1967 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Hubert Bennett/Greater London Council Jack Whittle, F.G West and Geoffrey Horsefal |
| Structural engineer | Ove Arup & Partners |
| Main contractor | Higgs and Hill |
The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival of Britain of 1951, and the Hayward Gallery. It stands on the former site of a shot tower, built as part of a lead works in 1826 and retained for the Festival of Britain.
The venue was closed for two years of renovations in September 2015.
The QEH has over 900 seats and the Purcell Room in the same building has 360 seats. These two auditoriums were built together by Higgs and Hill and opened in March 1967. They were designed as additions to the Southbank Centre arts complex, with The Hayward (opened in October 1968), by Hubert Bennett, head of the architects department of the Greater London Council, with Jack Whittle, F.G West and Geoffrey Horsefall.
The sculpture Zemran in stainless steel (by William Pye, 1972) stands on the riverside terrace of the QEH.
The QEH is an example of brutalist architecture. The design was intended to show to a high degree the separate masses and elements of the building, in order to avoid competing with the scale and presence of the Royal Festival Hall. 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 have very limited fenestration except for the (deeply inset) sweep along the river frontage of the foyer building.
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