The National Theatre Company was founded in 1962 with Laurence Olivier as the director, with the intention to present British dramatic art in the domestic area and in foreign countries, as well as inviting other European theatres to England. Its original home was the Chichester theatre and the Old Vic theatre but soon the company decided to set up their own building in London. The Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee with Olivier as a member formed a building committee to plan the creation of a building befitting the rank of the National Theatre Company.
The building committee faced the task to find an architect for the project. With the help of the Royal Institute of British Architects it organized a competition with three hundred participants and chose twenty in the end for the final round in which Denys Lasdun was unanimously chosen as the architect. He had never designed a theatre before. This very demanding task took him, his partner Peter Softley and his team over a decade to fulfil.
The National Theatre was opened in March 1976 with the first play. Together with the concert halls Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, the Museum of the Moving Image, the National Film Theatre and the Hayward Art Gallery for modern art it represents the center of cultural life around the south bank of the Thames.
The following paper deals with the architecture of the National Theatre, especially with the floor plan and the architect’s design and intentions.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Denys Lasdun - Life and Influences
3. The Exterior of the National Theatre
4. The Interior of the National Theatre
4.1 The Olivier Theatre
4.2 The Lyttelton Theatre
4.3 The Cottesloe Theatre
5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
The National Theatre Company was founded in 1962 with Laurence Olivier as the director, with the intention to present British dramatic art in the domestic area and in foreign countries, as well as inviting other European theatres to England. Its original home was the Chichester theatre and the Old Vic theatre but soon the company decided to set up their own building in London. The Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee with Olivier as a member formed a building committee to plan the creation of a building befitting the rank of the National Theatre Company.
The building committee faced the task to find an architect for the project. With the help of the Royal Institute of British Architects it organized a competition with three hundred participants and chose twenty in the end for the final round in which Denys Lasdun was unanimously chosen as the architect. He had never designed a theatre before. This very demanding task took him, his partner Peter Softley and his team over a decade to fulfil.
The National Theatre was opened in March 1976 with the first play. Together with the concert halls Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, the Museum of the Moving Image, the National Film Theatre and the Hayward Art Gallery for modern art it represents the center of cultural life around the south bank of the Thames.
The following paper deals with the architecture of the National Theatre, especially with the floor plan and the architect’s design and intentions.
2. Denys Lasdun – Life and Influences
Denys Lasdun, born in 1914, is a major British architect whose career began in the early 1930´s and closely follows the development of the Modern Movement in Britain. Educated at the Architectural Association, he was strongly influenced by foreign architects who brought the use of forms of the International Style to the very traditional United Kingdom at the beginning of the 1930´s and by the English Baroque, especially the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Lasdun´s style is characterized by Le Corbusier´s Five Points of a New Architecture, and “the simplicity of form, the use of concrete and glass, the new sense of space and the concern for a suitable setting for modern life”[1]. He “has been described as the most eminent of the few architects to have transformed Le Corbusier´s legacy to the English way of life.”[2]
Among the foreign architects emigrating to England were Wells Coates from Canada and Berthold Lubetkin who had worked in Paris before. Lasdun worked with Coates for two years, in 1938 he switched to the Tecton team founded by Lubetkin and in the same year, when he was only 24 years old, he built a residential building in Bayswater, a district of London. In this building one can clearly see parallels to Le Corbusier´s Maison Cook in Paris.
In his design Lasdun always follows the idea that buildings should encourage social interaction and respond to the countryside or city. That is why he concentrated on setting up residential, university and public buildings which are best suitable to put those objectives into effect. His most mature and autonomous buildings are represented by artificial scenery made from concrete for different universities in Britain in the 1960´s.
In 1963 he was chosen to plan and build the National Theatre, a challenge he had never faced before. It took him and his partners 13 years to fulfil this task.
In the following years Lasdun took on more than 20 projects, such as the residential building of the Christ’s College in Cambridge or the European Investment Bank in Luxemburg.
His last project was the Royal Academy in 1997 which met great appreciation in the public.
Before his death in January 2001, aged 86, he could still live through the success of his architectural lifework.
3. The Exterior of the National Theatre
The National Theatre is located a little downstream from Waterloo Bridge on the South Bank of the Thames where the river begins to turn into Kings Reach and bends towards the city.
The main decisions influencing the architecture of the building were made between 1964 and 1967 and therefore it comprises ideas that “have been guiding Denys Lasdun for about two decades and coincide with the maturity of his architectural language.”[3] The most remarkable features of the final plan were typical stylistic elements like the expression of an interior hierarchy, the 45-degree inflection of the main axis and the integration of public circulation.
The National Theatre is undoubtedly a landmark in London’s cityscape, big, forceful and completely made of bare concrete, which was the only material capable of supporting the terraces and big apertures. The concrete is whitish-grey, bare and unadorned throughout the whole building.
The opening of the building coincided with an economic downturn in England, which caused very ambivalent reactions in the public. Lasdun and his partners and also the director at that time, Peter Hall, were often criticized because of excessiveness in their planning. The building seemed much too expensive, the time needed for construction was too long given the economic circumstances of the 60`s and it was regarded as being stylistically out of fashion by the time of completion. Despite all this criticism the architects finished the construction as it was planned and it was possible to open the theatre with the first play in March 1976.
The first thing one notices when approaching the National Theatre are two blank concrete fly-towers, housing flying equipment, elevators and ventilation, that rise from layers of horizontal terraces and signal the two main theatres inside.
The terraces are a one of the most important features, they create a horizontal effect in the building that is contrasted by the vertical fly-towers. This contrast between vertical and horizontal effects is a central aspect of Lasdun`s style. The terraces step down towards the river, which creates a pyramid-like effect, connect to the bridge and symbolize an extension of the city. Between the terraces is glass, so from the outside people can be seen moving through the frame of the building.
Lasdun refers to the terraces as strata, which have their roots in Le Corbusier`s idea of creating streets in the air. They represent landscape formations and levels, which corresponds to Lasdun`s desire to create associations of geological forms in all his buildings.
Lasdun also connects with the strata the idea of the whole building as a theatre – the fourth theatre. “The theatre is part of the city and the city part of the theatre. Street and square were the earliest urban settings of drama and there is a return to street theatre when events occur on the fourth theatre of the strata.”[4]
[...]
[1] Amery, Colin: The National Theatre: The Architectural Review Guide. London 1977,
p. 55
[2] www.arxitecture.org.uk
[3] Amery, Colin: The National Theatre: The Architectural Review Guide. London 1977,
p. 52
[4] Amery, Colin: The National Theatre: The Architectural Review Guide. London 1977,
p. 56
5 Goodwin, Tim: Britain’s Royal National theatre: the first 25 years. London 1988
p. 99
6 Amery, Colin: The National Theatre: The Architectural Review Guide. London 1977,
p. 69
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