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England-based Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios have completed their redesign of the Hayward Gallery which transforms the iconic cultural venue into a modern space which allows Southbank Centre to continue to provide “more access, to more arts, for more people.”
The Southbank Undercroft, which lies beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall along the River Thames in London, has been the subject of much debate in recent years following a proposed closure and redevelopment in 2013. Long Live Southbank, an organization born out of this threat of expulsion, gave the diverse community who call the space home a voice. After 17 months of campaigning, they were successful in ensuring the Undercroft was legally protected and fully recognized as an asset of community value. Since then, the group of activists has begun another groundbreaking journey.
In partnership with Southbank Centre, Long Live Southbank recently launched a new crowdfunding campaign to restore the legendary Undercroft. The restoration project will cost £790,000 and is set to open in 2018, improving Londoners’ access to free creative spaces in the heart of the City. These types of space are becoming increasingly rare and the restoration effort reflects a desire to celebrate the authentic cultural sites that make London the vibrant landscape it is.
The Southbank Centre—a large complex of Grade One listed, Modernist cultural venues on the banks of the River Thames—are poised to refurbish three of their most loved spaces: the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery. As part of this transformation, London-based practice Jonathan Tuckey Design (JTD) have been commissioned to create a new 'Archive Studio' set within the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, all part and parcel of the Southbank Centre’s desire to open up access to their collections and archives. JTD's free-standing, self-supporting structure is "an open framework which makes the scale the archival process apparent to visitors, held together by polished brass nuts and bolts and clad in perforated hardboard."
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Today, London's Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre has opened a major exhibition of the work of Carsten Höller, the artist who is best-known for playfully inserting his slide installations into major galleries worldwide. Titled Carsten Höller Decision, the exhibition features works from throughout Höller's career, as well as a number of new works created especially for the show - not least Isometric Slides, his latest slide installation that gives gallery visitors the option of leaving the exhibition at speed from the Hayward Gallery's pyramidal roof lights.
London's Southbank Centre announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with skateboarding group Long Live Southbank, and is dropping plans to move the famous skatepark to a new site underneath Hungerford Bridge nearby. The decision, which is ensured by a binding planning agreement with Lambeth Council, brings a close to a dispute that has lasted almost a year and a half - ever since the Southbank Centre unveiled redevelopment plans by Feilden Clegg Bradley which included the removal of the skatepark in favour of retail space in the Southbank's undercroft.
The agreement also involves both sides dropping a series of legal challenges initiated during the dispute, including the Southbank's challenge over the registration of the skatepark as an 'asset of community value,' an attempt by Long Live Southbank to have the skatepark listed as a village green, and a judicial review of Lambeth Council's decision to reject the village green application.
The Southbank Centre has announced that it is delaying its planning applicationonce again.The decision has been prompted by comments from London Mayor Boris Johnson, who last month opined that the skate park should remain in its current location. An official statement from the Southbank Centre said: "it is far from clear how the scheme might now proceed without exposing Southbank Centre to unacceptable levels of financial risk but it has committed to a final three-month search."
However, despite the three-month extension, Chairman Rick Haythornthwaite has all but admitted defeat, saying "we are under no illusions [...] we don’t yet see how we will make it work."
Read on for more about the decision
Earlier this month, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios released new images of the Southbank Centre, the most detailed renderings yet of the highly controversial redevelopment. Among the most significant alterations are a change to the exterior of the crowning glass box, a slight reduction in the size of the "liner" building (to preserve views of the Houses of Parliament from the neighboring National Theatre), and adjustments to various columns to preserve routes through the site.
Read on to find out more about the changes to the design..
It's been almost two months since we revealed that the Southbank Centre had agreed to support a fundraising campaign by Long Live Southbank, the campaign aiming to preserve the skatepark in Southbank's undercroft and save it from the £120 million redevelopment of the site as a whole.
This was just one twist in a story that included criticism from the UK's design council CABE and from the neighboring National Theatre, a 50,000 strong petition from skateboarders, an unsuccessful attempt to have the skatepark listed as a village green, a successful attempt to have it classified as an 'asset of community value', and a delayed planning application.
So after all this controversy, what has happened in the last two months?
In yet another twist to the ongoing story of the Southbank Centre redevelopment, the Architects' Journal reports that the Southbank Centre has agreed to back a fundraising campaign to keep the famous skate park (if you missed the potential re-designs, click here), with the stipulation that a plan B be put in place in case the fundraising fails. And with at least £17 million needed to replace the revenue that the Centre would have gained by filling the undercroft with retail units, it could be time for the thousands who objected to the proposals to put their money where their mouth is. Find the full article here.
Ever since London's Southbank Centre and Feilden Clegg Bradley revealed plans for the new ‘Festival Wing' earlier this year, the plans have come under fire - and by no group more vociferous than London's skateboarders.
The original plans proposed converting the space under Hungerford Bridge, used by skateboarders for years, into a new riverside area for urban arts. In response to skateboarders' outcry, Southbank Centre has decided to alter the design of the space so that skateboarders' needs will be taken into account. The Centre commissioned Iain Borden, skater and Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Rich Holland, skater and architectural designer at Floda31 to prepare a draft design brief earlier this summer; now, three architectural practices with skate-space experience have responded to the brief with three potential designs.·
An expert panel of skaters, including Borden, Holland, and film-maker Winstan Whitter, will then be responsible for "selecting the architect they’d most like to work with, finalising the design brief and developing the design."
Check out the proposals from 42 Architects, SNE Architects and Rich Architecture, after the break...
Having wrapped up their three part series And the Winner is...?, The Architecture Foundation has launched another trio of evening discussions, this time around the ever-encroaching commercial values which are increasingly threatening cultural venues in London. The series, entitled Culture + Commerce, will explore how culture can fight against commercial homogeneity in the face of reduced public funding.
In the latest twist in an ongoing saga, the skateboarders campaigning to save the undercroft of the Southbank Centre have succeeded in a bid to list the space as an Asset of Community Value under the Localism Act, as reported by Architects' Journal. The listing means that any planning decision would have to take the loss to the skating community into account. Read the full article here.
The Southbank Centre and Feilden Clegg Bradley have taken their designs back to the drawing board, deciding to delay their planning application in order to resolve the mounting issues surrounding the proposal.
The designs to update the brutalist cultural centre have divided people from the start; however, the tide of opinion seems to have definitively shifted away from the design due to a sustained campaign by skateboarders (who make use of the undercroft) and now criticism from the neighboring National Theatre and the UK design council CABE.
Read more about the controversy surrounding the Southbank Centre after the break...
The saga of the Southbank Centre redevelopment in London heated up recently, after the scheme for the new 'Festival Wing' was formally submitted to Lambeth's planning department. The scheme, which has been well received by some of the architecture community, including the centre's original architects Norman Engleback and Dennis Crompton, has run afoul of the skateboarding community, which opposes the plan to infill the undercroft that has been their home for almost 40 years.
After a petition to save the skatepark garnered over 40,000 signatures, the skating community has mobilized once again to object to the planning application en masse. The campaign to save the skatepark has even garnered the attention of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, who wrote to the Southbank Centre's director of partnership and policy Mike McCart to explain that:
“It’s truly an historic feature of London street culture, and is as well known to skateboarders around the world as Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. Honestly.”
Among the extensive discussion of Feilden Clegg Bradley's scheme to redesign the Southbank Centre in London, one issue which has sometimes been ignored by the architectural media has been the proposal to relocate the skate park in the under-croft of the Queen Elizabeth Hall to a space beneath the nearby Hungerford bridge.
Unsurprisingly, this decision has sparked a petition which has collected nearly 40,000 signatures to save one of the UK's most famous skating hotspots. We’ve talked about how skaters can teach architects about understanding space before; however, in this instance I would like to examine how skaters as a (sub)cultural entity interact with the city, and how the city can cater to their needs. Though many architects are already in favor of accepting skaters, I hope to explore why the wider community tends to see skating as a problem to be solved, and what this can reveal about the proposal at the Southbank Centre.
Read on to find out more about the peculiar way skaters experience cities
Today, the Southbank Centre announced its appointment of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS) as lead architect to refurbish and renew the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. The UK-practice beat OMA, Heneghan Peng, Allies & Morrison, Eric Parry, van Heyningen & Haward and Grimshaw Architects to the job (see shortlist here). A formal appointment will be made after the statutory 10-day standstill period in accordance with EU regulations.
Rick Mather, Southbank Centre’s Masterplan Architect and a member of the selection panel, said: “We heard a huge amount of high quality and serious thinking demonstrating six quite different approaches to this part of the site. Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio’s proposals won because they best understood the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex and how it can be enjoyed and used more effectively. I look forward to seeing their designs develop over the coming months.”
Learn more after the break.
The UK’s largest arts centre, occupying an 21-acre site that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames, has announced the shortlist of architects competing to head the refurbishment and renewal of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. According to a statement released by the Southbank Centre, the project plans to bring the performance spaces and galleries in the complex up to the standard of the recently transformed Royal Festival Hall and will address current urgent problems including poor access to and the upgrading of the stages and galleries; sub-standard back stage areas; and worn out services.
The eight shortlisted practices are:
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.jpg?1433944513 "Flying Mushrooms, 2015. Image © Linda Nylind")
.jpg?1433943325 "Two Flying Machines, 2015. Image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO studio")