Information AboutPurcell Room |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PURCELL ROOM | |
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The Purcell Room hosts a wide range of Chamber Music , Jazz , Mime and Poetry recitals. Access is via the same foyer as for the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH), most easily reached from the upper riverside terrace of the Royal Festival Hall . In the context of the South Bank Centre it is the smallest of a set of three venues, the other two being the Royal Festival Hall , a large symphony hall, and the QEH, which is used for orchestral, chamber and contemporary amplified music. The Purcell Room was built at the same time as the QEH, with which it shares a common foyer building and architectural features as an example of Brutalist Architecture . The focus of the building is its interior space and it makes few concessions to external decoration. From outside, even its position within the South Bank Centre is not easy to discern. EXTERNAL LINKS
DESIGN Like the QEH, the Purcell Room (PR) exterior needs some knowledge to understand and appreciate. The PR stands between the QEH and Hayward Gallery , aligned parallel to Waterloo Bridge , with the stage at the north-west end. The PR auditorium is cantilevered out over the centre access road and its rear facade faces the entrance to the Hayward Gallery . The auditorium is reported to be fitted with a Helmholtz Resonator to allow its acoustic properties to be modified. The access link from the foyer (shared with the QEH) is through a massive sculpted concrete casing, visible from outside the entrance to the Hayward, near the overhead bridge. The treatment of the ventilation services is an early example of the external treatment of such equipment. This idea later reached a peak in the Centre Georges Pompidou , Paris and Lloyd's Building , London in the 1970's and 80's respectively. The roof of the PR building, which is supported independently of the auditorium, holds the plant room for both the QEH and PR. The plant room's three massive vents are housed high above the walkway near the entrance to the Hayward and also towards the Waterloo Bridge side of the north corner of the roof. Massive concrete ducts lead from the plant room: vertically to the foyer building below via the mysterious concrete tower, and horizontally to the QEH auditorium. An artists' foyer is between the PR and QEH auditoriums at ground level. FUTURE As of 2005, the long term future of the Purcell Room is unclear in the context of the desire of the Arts Council England to see two 1,100 seat auditoriums on the site of the QEH and Purcell Room, one for classical music and one for contemporary amplfied music, based on the Arts Council's and South Bank Centre's submissions to London Borough of Lambeth Unitary Development Plan. |
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