FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

The 'Festival of Britain' was a national exhibition which opened in London and around Britain in May 1951. The official opening was on May 3.^[1] The principal exhibition site was on the south bank of the River Thames near Waterloo Station. Other exhibitions were held in Poplar, East London (Architecture), South Kensington (Science) and the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow (Industrial Power) as well as travelling exhibitions that toured Britain by land and sea.
At that time, shortly after the end of World War II, much of London was still in ruins and redevelopment was badly needed. The Festival was an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war. The Festival also celebrated the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition. It was the brainchild of Gerald Reid Barry and the Labour Deputy Leader Herbert Morrison who described it as "a tonic for the nation".
==The South Bank==
Construction of the South Bank site opened up a new public space, including a riverside walkway, where previously there had been warehouses and working-class housing. There was, however, opposition to the project from those who believed that the money (£8 million) would have been better spent on housing. (An Ealing Studios film was made about working-class resistance to the demolition that the festival required and featured a London family barricading themselves into their terraced house to prevent it being demolished to make way for the Festival of Britain. The house is finally saved when red-faced Whitehall bureaucrats decide to feature it in the Festival as a “typical English home”).
In 1948, the young architect Hugh Casson, 38, was appointed director of architecture for the Festival and he broadmindedly sought to appoint other young architects to design its buildings. He was knighted in 1952 for his efforts in relation to the Festival.
The layout of the South Bank site was intended by the organisers to showcase the principles of urban design that would feature in the post-war rebuilding of London and the creation of the new towns. These included multiple levels of buildings, elevated walkways and avoidance of a street grid. Most of the South Bank buildings were International Modernist in style, little seen in Britain before the war. All except the Royal Festival Hall were later destroyed by the incoming Churchill government in 1953, who thought them too 'socialist' for their taste. ^[2]

Contents

Design and the Festival buildings

Events associated with the Festival

Images of the Festival of Britain

Legacy

Books

See also

References

External links

Design and the Festival buildings

The graphic designer for the Festival of Britain was Abram Games who had been Official War Poster artist and whose iconic Britannia symbol of the Festival remains memorable.
The main South Bank site buildings and their architects were:

★ Dome of Discovery, perhaps later the inspiration for the Millennium Dome (designed by Ralph Tubbs)

★ Skylon, an unusual cigar-shaped aluminium-clad steel tower supported by cables (designed by Hidalgo Moya and Philip Powell).

★ An old shot tower

★ Transport, designed by Arcon

★ Festival Administration Building, by Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew and Edward Mills

★
★ The Lion and the Unicorn pavilion celebrating the history of the British nation (designed by R.D. Russell and