Purcell Room facts for kids
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The Purcell Room is a place for concerts and shows in central London. It is part of the Southbank Centre, which is one of London's main arts areas. The room is named after Henry Purcell, a famous English composer from the 1600s. It has 370 seats. The Purcell Room has hosted many different types of performances. These include chamber music (music for small groups), jazz, mime shows, and poetry readings. At the Southbank Centre, the Purcell Room is the smallest of three main venues. The other two are the Royal Festival Hall, which is a large hall for big orchestras, and the QEH, used for orchestral and modern music.
The Purcell Room was built at the same time as the QEH. They share a main entrance area and look similar. Both buildings are examples of a style called Brutalist architecture. This style uses a lot of raw concrete and often looks very strong and blocky. The inside of the Purcell Room is the most important part of its design. From the outside, it can be hard to see exactly where it is within the Southbank Centre. The QEH, Purcell Room, and The Hayward were all designed by Hubert Bennett and his team to add to the Southbank Centre arts area.
The Purcell Room was closed for a big renovation in September 2015. It reopened in 2018, looking fresh and new!
How It Looks
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The Purcell Room sits between the QEH concert hall and The Hayward. It runs parallel to Waterloo Bridge. The stage of the Purcell Room is next to the QEH hall. The main part of the room, called the auditorium, sticks out over a road below. Its back wall faces the entrance to The Hayward. The auditorium has special features to make the sound just right for performances.
You enter the Purcell Room through a large concrete pathway that connects it to the main entrance building (which it shares with the QEH). This pathway is easy to see from outside The Hayward, near the bridge that goes over the road. The area where artists get ready is on the ground floor, between the Purcell Room and QEH halls.
The way the building's air conditioning system is shown on the outside is quite unique. This idea of showing building equipment on the outside became more popular later. You can see similar designs in famous buildings like the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Lloyd's building in London.
The roof of the Purcell Room holds the machinery room for both the QEH and the Purcell Room. This room has three large vents that stick up high above the walkway near The Hayward entrance and towards Waterloo Bridge. Big concrete pipes lead from this machinery room. Some go down to the entrance building, and others go across to the QEH hall.
