Spring 1967 / Autumn 1968: The Complex Complex

“The word complex seems purpose-made. It is rather difficult to find your way in”

In February, the South Bank Arts Centre in London was finally awarded a grade II listing, 35 years after it was first recommended by English Heritage. Designed by the London County Council architects’ department under the leadership of Norman Engleback, the complex has long been viewed as either the apotheosis or nadir of British brutalism, depending on your sensibilities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, CQ was among its early champions (while acknowledging that “it will not be everyone’s cup of tea”.)

“Sincerity is the quality that stamps the whole concept – with a concentration of purpose and a clarity in the use of materials to serve that purpose,” wrote then-editor George Perkin, on first visiting the centre’s two auditoriums – the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room – in 1967. The foyer, with its “randomly placed” mushroom columns, pyramidal acoutic panels and glazed walls “must be one of the most exciting concourses anywhere”, its palette of concrete, white marble and black leather seats “an ideal background for the colour and movement of a concert-going throng”.

Perkin was particularly impressed by the distinctly un-British levels of concrete craftsmanship, the result of “an extensive tour of European countries” undertaken by the architects. “When the scheme went out to tender, contractors were invited to inspect a sample panel … with formwork of rip-sawn Baltic pine, which was found to have the most satisfactory grain structure … The contractor was obliged to construct a similar sample panel, designed to meet all likely contingencies in the structure.”

A year later, Perkin was back to look around the newly opened third wing, the Hayward art gallery. Despite some mild navigational difficulties (“The word complex seems purpose-made. It is rather difficult to find your way in
…”), he again admired the accomplished use of concrete, with “jutting balconies, terraces and linking walkways – all piling up like a cubist painting by Braque”. The centre as a whole, he concluded, was “neither trivial, nor transient, nor even fashionable” but “a serious, honest and lasting accompaniment to music and painting”.

Browse through nearly 80 years of Concrete Quarterly at concretecentre.com/archive

A book, The World Recast: 70 Buildings from 70 Years of Concrete Quarterly, is available from www.concretecentre.com/publications

Access the full CQ archive here.