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The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,500-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building, the first post-war building to become so protected (in 1981). The London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are resident in the hall.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about-us/resident-orchestras-and-associate-artists )〕 The hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain for London County Council, and was officially opened on 3 May 1951. When the LCC's successor, the Greater London Council, was abolished in 1986, the Festival Hall was taken over by the Arts Council, and managed together with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room (opened 1967) and the Hayward Gallery (1968), eventually becoming an independent arts organisation, now known as the Southbank Centre, in April 1998.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about-us/history-and-archive/southbank-centre-history )〕 The complex includes several reception rooms, bars and restaurants, and the Clore Ballroom, accommodating up to 440 for a seated dinner.〔(Southbank Centre's factsheet on the Clore Ballroom )〕 A large head and shoulders bust of Nelson Mandela (by Ian Walters,created in 1985) stands on the walkway between the hall and Hungerford Bridge approach viaduct. Originally made in glass-fibre it was repeatedly vandalised until re-cast in bronze. The complex's variety of open spaces and foyers are popular for social or work-related meetings, though there has been criticism that the areas attract some homeless people seeking daytime shelter, particularly in the colder months. The closest tube stations are Waterloo and, across the river via the Jubilee Bridges, Embankment and Charing Cross. == The original building == The Festival Hall project was led by London County Council’s chief architect, Robert Matthew, who gathered around him a young team of talented designers including Leslie Martin, who was eventually to lead the project with Edwin Williams〔http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=205350〕 and Peter Moro, along with the furniture designer Robin Day and his wife, the textile designer Lucienne Day. The acoustical consultant was Hope Bagenal, working with members of the Building Research Station; Henry Humphreys, Peter Parkin and William Allen. Martin was 39 at the time, and very taken with the Nordic activities of Alvar Aalto and Gunnar Asplund. The figure who really drove the project forward was Herbert Morrison, the Labour Party politician. He it was who had insisted that Matthew had Martin as his deputy architect, treating the Festival Hall as a special project. A 1948 sketch by Martin shows the design of the concert hall as the egg in a box. But the strength of the design was the arrangement of interior space: the central staircase has a ceremonial feel and moves elegantly through the different levels of light and air.〔 They were concerned that whilst the scale of the project demanded a monumental building, it should not ape the triumphal classicism of many earlier public buildings. The wide open foyers, with bars and restaurants, were intended to be meeting places for all: there were to be no separate bars for different classes of patron. Because these public spaces were built around the auditorium, they also had the effect of insulating the Hall from the noise of the adjacent railway bridge. To quote Leslie Martin, "The suspended auditorium provides the building with its major attributes: the great sense of space that is opened out within the building, the flowing circulation from the symmetrically placed staircases and galleries that became known as the ‘egg in the box’." The hall they built used modernism’s favourite material, reinforced concrete, alongside more luxurious elements including beautiful woods and Derbyshire fossilised limestone.〔 The exterior of the building was bright white, intended to contrast with the blackened city surrounding it. Large areas of glass on its façade meant that light coursed freely throughout the interior, and at night, the glass let the light from inside flood out onto the river, in contrast to the darkness which befell the rest of London after dusk. The hall originally seated 2,901. The cantilevered boxes are often described as looking like drawers pulled out in a hurried burglary, but none has a compromised sightline. The ceiling was wilfully sculptural, a conceit at the very edge of building technology and, as it turns out, way beyond the contemporary understanding of acoustics.〔 Robin Day, who designed the furniture for the auditorium, used a clearly articulated structure in his designs of bent plywood and steel.〔 The original building had lushly planted roof terraces; the Level Two foyer café had been able to spill out onto the terraces looking out on the river, and original entrances were positioned on the sides of the building, enabling visitors to arrive directly at the stairs leading to the auditorium. The foundation stone was laid in 1949 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee on the site of the former Lion Brewery, built in 1837.〔(''The Guardian'' ), 3 October 1949 on the laying of the foundation stone.〕 The building was constructed by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts〔Cubitts 1810 - 1975, published 1975〕 at a cost of £2 million and officially opened on 3 May 1951 with a gala concert attended by King George Vl and Queen Elizabeth, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult.〔''The Times,'' 21 November 1950, p. 6〕 The first general manager was T. E. Bean, who had previously managed the Hallé Orchestra. "I was overwhelmed by a shock of breathless delight at the originality and beauty of the interior. It felt as if I had been instantly transported far into the future and that I was on another planet," said journalist Bernard Levin of his first impressions of the building.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Royal Festival Hall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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