The Southbank Centre | Royal Festival Hall

Re-design of the auditorium & river-front bars busy all day, every day for meeting & working as well as pre-concert drinks.

Royal Festival Hall

Southbank Centre
London SE1

Space planning | Furniture specification | Procurement | Installation

New furniture for the interval and riverside bars, part of an on-going project at the Royal Festival Hall where the many doors are open all day for all-comers to do more or less whatever they like: otherwise known as The People’s Palace this is democratic design in action, and a challenge for floor staff to manage.

Following our research into visitor behaviour, the relationship between space, food, art, work, commerce and operation, and the role that furniture plays in this unruly mix, we developed a new shortlist: designed for busy rooms where everything needs to be easily reconfigured for daytime use, rush-hour intervals, orchestra meetings and private parties.  

The collection, chosen to work with the listed building fabric and original Robin Day interior, includes new and old, and different scales to suit use. Extra-large sofas are both comfortable and useful room dividers, stools double as side tables and move freely, and Jill chairs by Alfredo Häberli are a new design that seems to have been made especially for the Royal Festival Hall.

Southbank Centre Members’ room
Southbank Centre Furniture study

Photography Gareth Gardner