Royal National Theatre — Denys Lasdun, 1976: photos, plans & sections for a case study

About Royal National Theatre

The National Theatre (NT), officially the Royal National Theatre since 1988 and sometimes referred to as the National Theatre of Great Britain, is a performing arts venue and associated theatre company located in London, England, adjacent to (but not part of) the Southbank Centre. The theatre was founded by Laurence Olivier in 1963 and many well-known actors have since performed with it.

The style of the National Theatre building was described by architecture historian Mark Girouard as "an aesthetic of broken forms" at the time of opening. Architectural opinion was split at the time of construction. Even enthusiastic advocates of the Modern Movement such as Nikolaus Pevsner found the Béton brut RAAC concrete both inside and out overbearing. Most notoriously, the future Charles III described the building in 1988 as "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting". John Betjeman, a man not noted for his enthusiasm for brutalist architecture, wrote to Lasdun stating ironically that he "gasped with delight at the cube of your theatre in the pale blue sky and a glimpse of St Paul's to the south of it. It is a lovely work and so good from so many angles...it has that inevitable and finished look that great work does."

Shortened from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.