King George VI declared the Royal Festival Hall open on May 3, 1951. Sadly, a number of VIPs attending the event - including Gerald Barry, director general of the Festival of Britain, and the Lord Mayor of London - missed His Majesty's declaration: they were stuck in a lift inside Britain's first major post-war public building. Embarrassing that; yet in the 50 years since, the Royal Festival Hall - the "people's palace" - has been one of the most trouble-free and best-liked modern buildings in Britain.
Intellectually rigorous, elegant, impeccably built and open to all comers, the hall was and remains a triumph of democratic public design. It introduced the British public to a form of modern architecture that had been brewing since soon after the first world war, in Germany, France and the Soviet Union, but arrived here late and generally unappreciated. Although in many ways original, the RFH owed its pedigree to the radical architecture of early Soviet architects as much as it did to the less strident Scandinavian modernism that must have seemed so attractive to the hall's young British architects.
Those architects included Robert Matthew, Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Edwin Williams. When the new concert hall was commissioned from the London County Council architects' department in September 1948, most of the design team, led by Matthew, were under 40. They produced what Wagner would have called a Gesamkunstwerk - a complete artwork. Although not quite completed when opened as the heart of the Festival of Britain, the building brought together the very best talents the nation had to offer.
Its foyers were light and generous, reflections of the Thames rippling from its whiter-than-white ceilings on sunny days. (It rained and rained throughout the Festival of Britain.) The 3,165-seat auditorium was raised on stilts inside the generous volume of the stone-clad structure, so that it sat, as Martin said, like an "egg in a box". This was a stroke of genius - and it still surprises. Because you can see from one side of the RFH to the other, through big windows, the auditorium appears to have done a runner. In fact, it's up above you, a surprise of warm wood, swallow-nest boxes and plush seats. It has a magnificent organ designed by Ralph Downes . . . all 10,000 tons of it. Lined in double concrete walls to keep the noise of trains crossing Hungerford Bridge at bay, it is as "rich and as sensual", according to its architects, "as 1951 would allow an interior".
The reason for placing the auditorium above the foyers was not to show how clever the architects were but to solve a very basic problem: although situated on a magnificent bend on the River Thames, the site itself was tight, hemmed in on one side by Hungerford railway bridge and on the other by what was scheduled to become the Royal National Theatre. The solution? Build upwards so as to maximise public circulation space in the building.
"We have taken a cube of space roughly 200ft square and 80ft high," wrote Martin at the time. "Within this space we have modelled and sculpted out the shape of the component parts and, as you move through the foyers and promenades, if you are aware of the excitement of its vistas and its continual unfolding of space, we shall not have failed." They haven't.
For all its cool, rational logic, the RFH weaves a quiet magic on the 3m people who pass through its unpretentious portals each year (the numbers increased dramatically from 1983 when the foyer doors were thrown open all day).
The real wonder, though, is that it was built at all. In 1948, with Britain worn out by war, the only buildings approved for capital expenditure were homes, schools and factories. The RFH went ahead, however, with a budget of £2m (it came in less than 1% over budget), with Herbert Morrison, Lord President of Council and former leader of the London County Council acting as its guardian angel. In the event, the RFH took just 20 months to build, a remarkably short time given the constraints of the time and the radical nature of its design.
The RFH meant a great deal to the music world and to concert-goers who had been denied a major, purpose-built concert hall since 1941, when the Queen's Hall was burned out by a German incendiary bomb. The Royal Albert Hall, with its then decidedly dodgy acoustics, had always been a multi-purpose venue, for boxing as well as Beethoven.
Sir Malcolm Sargent was the musical advisor to the RFH and every attempt was made to create what might be described as a democratic acoustic. The aim was a sound that was equal and consistent when heard from any seat in the auditorium. This meant, in theory, that every seat could be sold at the same price - although in practice this has never been the case.
The stage was designed to optimise orchestral acoustics, so percussion and brass sections were sited on a concrete floor and the rest of the orchestra on timber. The reverberation time was intended to be 2.2 seconds (slightly warm) but ended up a rather cold 1.5. (A medieval cathedral, with its rich, echoing sound, is normally about 11 seconds.)
Yet, musically as well as architecturally, the RFH was judged a critical and popular success.The acoustic was praised by conductors and orchestras at the time for its "modern" crispness; today, a warmer sound is appreciated and the auditorium is to be subtly tuned as far as this is possible. Every last detail was intended to be the newest and the best.
Aside from the care that went into its musical properties, the RFH was a showcase of modern design - furniture by Robin Day, a distinctive bat-and-ball carpet by Peter Moro, who had worked on the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, which was, in its much smaller way, a prototype for the RFH. The British public would have seen little to match it in modern intent, except, of course, for the stations, rolling stock and buses of Frank Pick's London Underground, much admired by Matthew, Martin, Moro and co, and made possible with the earlier political machinations of Herbert Morrison.
But . . . the RFH was never quite complete. Its backstage facilities were derisory and the face it presented to the Thames was a little grim, and temporary. In June 1964, the building was closed for eight months for a facelift. The big smile of its Thames-side elevation dates from this time.
Ever since, the RFH has been cluttered up inside, then stripped back a bit, then messed up again. Only recently has a considered, long-term plan been put into practice, with the architects Allies and Morrison commissioned to work through the building to both renovate and improve. Two of the practice's architects working on the RFH, Graham Morrison and Di Haig, were trained by Martin when he was professor of architecture at Cambridge. The new works, quiet and respectful, and due for completion in 2003/4, include a new recital room, the opening up of the garden roof terraces for the first time in many years, new bars and cafes extending on to terraces, new backstage areas and a general architectural wash- and brush-up. A slim new office will rise alongside Hungerford Bridge to house RFH and other South Bank Centre staff.
Meanwhile, the whole of the South Bank is being replanned under the direction of Rick Mather. A landscape architect is to be appointed in May after the RFH's 50th birthday celebrations and one of either Rafael Vignoly or FOA (Foreign Office Architects - just a name, and nothing to do with government wallahs) will be offered the commission to design a new arts building on the Jubilee Gardens site on the other side of Hungerford Bridge from the RFH. This was where the principal buildings of the 1951 Festival of Britain stood, including Powell & Moya's Skylon and Ralph Tubbs's Dome of Discovery.
Fifty years young, the Royal Festival Hall remains an evolving showcase of open, accessible, democratic architecture. It is as popular as it is a work of sotto voce triumph over austerity art.
The Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, celebrates its birthday throughout May, with a Birthday Gala on Thursday. Details: 020-7960 4301; www.rfh.org.uk
