ABSTRACT
London’s Royal Festival Hall opened its doors on 3 May 1951. The first concert hall to be built in Britain after World War Two, it was not just an iconic piece of architecture but would also become an archetype in design for musical tone. Its design fused architecture, music, and science, and its construction process was interspersed with a series of experiments that were implemented throughout 1950 and 1951 to allow for acoustic adaptation as the building was finalised. This paper examines the interdisciplinary collaborations that informed the process, and the differing forms of experience and expertise that formed a valid part of the hall’s construction. It highlights the manner in which the final stages of the construction process were tempered and revised (over the course of three months) to take account of these, and the contemporary social and cultural priorities which were brought to the fore as a result.
