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‘A new image of the living theatre’: the Genesis and Design of the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 1948–58

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Alistair Fair
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Extract

When it opened in March 1958, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, was the first new professional theatre to be constructed in Britain for nearly two decades and the country’s first all-new civic theatre (Figs 1 and 2). Financially supported by Coventry City Council and designed in the City Architect’s office, it included a 910-seat auditorium with associated backstage facilities. Two features of the building were especially innovative, namely its extensive public foyers and the provision of a number of small flats for actors. The theatre, whose name commemorated a major gift of timber to the city of Coventry from the Yugoslav authorities, was regarded as the herald of a new age and indeed marked the beginning of a boom in British theatre construction which lasted until the late 1970s. Yet its architecture has hitherto been little considered by historians of theatre, while accounts of post-war Coventry have instead focused on other topics: the city’s politics; its replanning after severe wartime bombing; and the architecture of its new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence in 1950 and executed amidst international interest as a symbol of the city’s post-war recovery. However, the Belgrade also attracted considerable attention when it opened. The Observer’s drama critic, Kenneth Tynan, was especially effusive, asking ‘in what tranced moment did the City Council decided to spend £220,000 on a bauble as superfluous as a civic playhouse?’ For him, it was ‘one of the great decisions in the history of local government’. This article considers the architectural implications of that ‘great decision’. The main design moves are charted and related to the local context, in which the Belgrade was intended to function as a civic and community focus. In this respect, the Labour Party councillors’ wish to become involved in housing the arts reflected prevailing local and national party philosophy but was possibly amplified by knowledge of eastern European authorities’ involvement in accommodating and subsidizing theatre. In addition, close examination of the Belgrade’s external design, foyers and auditorium illuminates a number of broader debates in the architectural history of the period. The auditorium, for example, reveals something of the extent to which Modern architecture could be informed by precedent. Furthermore, the terms in which the building was received are also significant. Tynan commented: ‘enter most theatres, and you enter the gilded cupidacious past. Enter this one, and you are surrounded by the future’. Although it was perhaps inevitable that the Belgrade was thought to be unlike older theatres, given that there had been a two-decade hiatus in theatre-building, the resulting contrast was nonetheless rather appropriate, allowing the building to connote new ideas whilst also permitting us to read the Belgrade in terms of contemporary debates about the nature of the ‘modern monument’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 54 , 2011 , pp. 347 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2011

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References

Notes

1 Rowell, Geoffrey and Jackson, Anthony , The Repertory Movement (Oxford, 1984), p. 89 Google Scholar. For acknowledgment that the boom was ending, see Ham, Roderick, ‘Buildings Update: Theatre and Performance Spaces’, Architects’ Journal, 174/32 (12 August 1981), pp. 309–23 Google Scholar and 355–69 (p. 356).

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3 For reviews in the architectural press, see, for example, ‘ Theatre in Corporation Street, Coventry’, Architects’ Journal, 128 (7 August 1958), pp. 199–214 Google Scholar; ‘Belgrade Theatre’, Architect and Building News, 213 (18 June 1958), pp. 797–806 Google Scholar.

4 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313 / 5 / 2 /1, Press clippings book: Observer, 30 March 1958.

5 Ibid.

6 For the extensions, see Alan Short, C., Barrett, Peter and Fair, Alistair, Geometry and Atmosphere: Theatre Buildings from Vision to Reality (Farnham, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 5. The scheme, designed by Stanton Williams Architects, marked the fulfilment of the theatre’s long-standing wish for a second auditorium, manifested in various schemes, including one illustrated in drawings of the early 1960s now in the V&A Theatre Collections Archive, ACGB/107/78, showing an annexe adjacent to the side of the Belgrade with a flexible rehearsal room/studio and new workshops.

7 Walford, ‘Architecture in Tension’, p. 133.

8 Johnson-Marshall, Percy, Rebuilding Cities (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 295 Google Scholar.

9 [Anon.], ‘England, Coventry’, in The Heart of the City: the Humanisation of Urban Life, ed. Tyrwhitt, J., Sert, J. L. and Rogers, E. N. (London, 1952), pp. 134–35 Google Scholar.

10 For a short discussion of the history of subsidy and its implications, see Short, Barrett and Fair, Geometry and Atmosphere, ch. 1. The impact of the new idea prompted the historian Richard Leacroft to discuss the nature of a civic theatre in his Civic Theatre Design (London, 1949)Google Scholar.

11 Roots, William L. et al., The Local Government Act 1948 (London, 1948), pp. 87–91 Google Scholar.

12 Coventry, History Centre, CCA / 3 /1 /11161, Letters between the Town Clerk and Mary Glasgow, Arts Council of Great Britain, May 1949. See also Hodgkinson, George, Sent to Coventry (London, 1970), p. 194 Google Scholar.

13 Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry, p. 195.

14 Coventry, History Centre, CCA / 3 /1 /11161, Letter from Charles Landstone, Arts Council of Great Britain, to the Town Clerk, 22 September 1949.

15 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/3/1/11161, Minutes of a meeting between the Arts Council, Alderman Hodgkinson, and Charles Barrett, Town Clerk, 7 October 1949.

16 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/3/1/11161, Letter from the Town Clerk to Mary Glasgow, Arts Council of Great Britain, 4 November 1949.

17 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/25, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 30 November and 6 December 1951; Coventry Standard, 8 February 1952.

18 Coventry, History Centre, uncat., City Council Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) minutes [hereafter ‘PAC minutes’], 4 April 1950.

19 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/26, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 15 January 1953

20 See also PAC minutes, 31 March 1953.

21 PAC minutes, 21 January 1953.

22 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/ TC/1/1/25, Press clippings book: Coventry Standard, 8 February 1952.

23 PAC minutes, 31 March 1953.

24 Coventry, History Centre, CCA / TC /1 /1 / 26, Press clippings book: Coventry Standard, 20 June 1952.

25 PAC minutes, 3 November 1953.

26 Martin Froy, ‘Second Report to the Arts Council’, typescript MS dated 14 November 1954, copy in Froy’s private archive.

27 ‘Haymarket Theatre, Leicester’, Architects’ Journal, 159 /12 (20 March 1974), pp. 607–22 Google Scholar (p. 608).

28 Pearson, Kenneth, ‘The Belgrade’, Sunday Times, 30 March 1958, p. 18 Google Scholar, attributes the building to King. For the operation of Gibson’s office, see Walford, ‘Architecture in Tension’, p. 134.

29 Coventry, History Centre, AP/PL/38/1458/32, issue 4, section through the theatre, July 1954; see also ‘ Theatre, Coventry’, Architectural Review, 117 (January 1955), pp. 35–36 Google Scholar.

30 See in particular Coventry, History Centre, drawings bundle 39363: nos 1458/28 issue 4/5 (ground-floor plan, August 1954) and 1458/33 issue 4/5 (Corporation Street elevation with materials, July 1954); also bundle 39363A / B, 1458/32, the section through the theatre.

31 Hasegawa, Replanning, p. 25; Ling, Arthur, ‘Urban Renewal: Piecemeal or Planned?’, RIBA Journal, 70 (1963), pp. 9–15 Google Scholar (p. 14).

32 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Collection, Coventry building file, clipping from The Times, 18 November 1954.

33 ‘Theatre, Coventry’ (as n. 29 above).

34 ‘Theatre, Coventry’, and Coventry, History Centre, drawings bundle 39363: nos 1458/37 issue 4 (August 1955) and 1458/28 issue 4/5 (August 1955); also drawings bundle 39363A/B: nos 1458/32 issue 4 (July 1954); Richardson, Kenneth, Twentieth-Century Coventry (London, 1972), p. 299 Google Scholar.

35 PAC minutes, 13 March 1956.

36 Letter of 25 June 1956: Coventry, History Centre, filed as no. 6934 within drawings bundle 39363A/B.

37 Coventry, History Centre, AP/PL/38/1458/170, plan of the proposed square, October 1955.

38 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/28, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1 March 1956.

39 For the alternative scheme, see Coventry, History Centre, AP/PL/38/1458/160–64.

40 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: News Chronicle, 6 February 1958.

41 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Daily Mail, 13 March 1958.

42 In terms of the architectural press, see for example, Architectural Review, 109 (June 1951)Google Scholar, devoted in its entirety to the Festival Hall (including an article about the indoor plants!).

43 ‘New City Theatre and Concert Hall, Malmö‘, Architect and Building News, 182 (20 April 1945), pp. 40–44 Google Scholar; ‘Theatre at Malmö’, Architectural Review, 99 (March 1946), pp. 72–76 Google Scholar.

44 For the interest of the Festival Hall design team in Sweden, see Glendinning, Miles, Modern Architect: the Life and Times of Robert Matthew (London, 2008), p. 92 Google Scholar.

45 [Oxford University Drama Commission], Report of the Oxford University Drama Commission (Oxford, 1948), esp. pp. 15–23 Google Scholar for report by Gibberd; see also University of Bristol Drama Department, Richard Southern Archive, RS/0080/0015, file of clippings for the exhibition (the clipping is attributed in ink to the Birmingham Mail, 28 June 1951). A similar theatre was proposed by Gibberd for Harlow: see the model illustrated in Powers, Alan, Britain: Modern Architectures in History (London, 2007), p. 87 Google Scholar.

46 See, for example, the extensive coverage of the theatre in Architectural Review, 71 (June 1932), pp. 219–56 Google Scholar.

47 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Times, 6 February 1958; Walford, ‘Architecture in Tension’, p. 276.

48 Martin Froy, ‘Report to the Arts Council’, MS of c. 1956, in Froy’s private archive.

49 For example Coventry, History Centre, AP/PL/38/1458/170, plan of the proposed square, October 1955.

50 Richardson, Coventry, p. 299.

51 J. L. Sert, ‘Centres of Community Life’, in Heart of the City, ed. Tyrwhitt, Serf and Rogers, pp. 3–16 (p. 6: ‘we believe that places of public gatherings such as public squares [...] should have a place in our cities’).

52 PAC Minutes, 13 March 1956.

53 Froy, ‘Report’ [c. 1956], pp. 2–3.

54 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: The Times, 6 February 1958. See also ‘The New Coventry’s Successful Break with Tradition’, The Times, 27 April 1956, p. 13: ‘the civic theatre [...] has been redesigned and greatly improved since the plans were published for it last year’.

55 ‘Sober Cheerfulness of Arts Council’, The Times, 18 October 1962, p. 18.

56 See, for example, Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 February 1958, for Bryan Bailey’s response to complaints about the use of civic money for the theatre.

57 Arts Council of Great Britain, Housing the Arts in Great Britain, 2 vols (London, 1959–61)Google Scholar.

58 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Collections, ACGB/120/47, ‘Housing the Arts’ papers: the first meeting of the Capital Grants Committee took place on 28 July 1965.

59 London, National Archives, HLG / 71 /1287, memorandum of a visit to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government by a delegation from Coventry on 8 April 1963.

60 Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 56.

61 Ibid., p. 61.

62 Ibid., p. 8.

63 Mason, Tony and Tiratsoo, Nick, ‘People, Politics and Planning: the Reconstruction of Coventry’s City Centre, 1940–53’, in M. Dieffendorf, Jeffry, Rebuilding Europe’s Bombed Cities (London, 1990), pp. 94–113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 109).

64 London, National Archives, HLG / 71 /1287, memorandum of 8 April 1963.

65 Glendinning, Modern Architect, p. 121.

66 For this idea at the national level, see Bullock, Nicholas, Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction (London, 2002), p. 5 Google Scholar.

67 Johnson-Marshall, Rebuilding Cities, p. 295; Mason and Tiratsoo, ‘People, Politics and Planning’, pp. 96–98, 100; Mumford, Lewis, The Culture of Cities (London, 1938), pp. 402–03 Google Scholar.

68 Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 9.

69 Coventry City Council, Coventry: the Development Plan (Coventry, 1952), pp. 20 and 100 Google Scholar; Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 7; Gregory, Terence, ‘Coventry’, in City Centre Redevelopment: a Study of British City Centre Planning and Case Studies of Five English City Centres, ed. Holliday, John (London, 1973), pp. 78–134 Google Scholar (p. 83). For the same argument in the Midland Daily Telegraph, 1936, see Hubbard, P., Faire, L. and Lilley, K., ‘Remembering Post-War Reconstruction: Modernism and City Planning in Coventry, 1940–62’, at <http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~gypjh/history.html> (accessed on 29 October 2006).+(accessed+on+29+October+2006).>Google Scholar

70 ‘Factory City Thinks Again’, Future Books, 3 (1946), p. 14, cited by Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 7.

71 Coventry, Development Plan, p. 109. For the Hippodrome, see Newman, Michael, The Golden Years: the Flippodrome Theatre, Coventry (London, 1995)Google Scholar, and documents in Coventry, History Centre, bundle CCA/3/1/11161.

72 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 5 February 1958.

73 Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 50.

74 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/23, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 9 January 1950.

75 Coventry, Development Plan, p. 109.

76 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press dippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 28 March 1958; see also Birmingham Mail, [20] March 1958.

77 For visits from representatives of Sarajevo and Belgrade, see Richardson, Coventry, p. 323. For contact with Lidice, Czechoslovakia, see Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/24, Press clippings book: Daily Worker, 30 June 1950.

78 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/26, Press clippings book: Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1 December 1952; Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, pp. 46 and 51–59.

79 Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, p. 51.

80 Ibid., pp. 56–57, 91.

81 Mason and Tiratsoo, ‘People, Politics and Planning’, p. 109.

82 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Tribune, 23 May 1958.

83 Coventry, History Centre, PA282, Belgrade Theatre opening programme, p. 23.

84 ‘A Better Life and Leisure for our Young People’, The Times, 24 November 1966, p. 15.

85 Mumford, Culture of Cities, pp. 471 and 483.

86 Geddes, Patrick, Cities in Evolution: an Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London, 1915), pp. 246–94 Google Scholar, 321–28.

87 See, for example, Glendinning, Modern Architect, p. 89.

88 For Coventry’s history of twinning, see ‘Twin Towns and Cities’ on the Coventry City Council website, at <http://www.coventry.gov.uk/directory/25/twin_towns_and_cities> (accessed on 13 March 2011).

89 Coventry City Council, ‘Twin Towns and Cities: Caen, France’, at <www.coventry.gov.uk/ directory_record/6204/caen_france>(accessed on 24 April 2011).

90 Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry, p. 214. For Tito: PAC minutes, 2 December 1952.

91 Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry, pp. 206–10, for a visit to Dresden and a commitment to use Dresden artists in the decoration of the Coventry Market Hall. See also Smith, Adrian, ‘The Bombed City of Coventry as a Symbol of National Reconstruction and International Reconciliation’, in Europäische Errinnerungsorte 2: Das Haus Europa, ed. den Boer, P., Duchardt, H., Kreis, G. and Schmale, W. (Mainz, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

92 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: News of the World, 30 March 1958.

93 BBC Monitor, spring 1958, precise date of broadcast unknown. Clip supplied by the Belgrade Theatre.

94 Markov, P. A., The Soviet Theatre (London, 1934), pp. 13 and 169 Google Scholar.

95 Saint, Andrew, Towards a Social Architecture: the Rise of School Building in Post-War England (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. viii–ix Google Scholar; see also Summerson’s, John introduction to Dannatt, Trevor, Modern Architecture in Britain (London, 1959), p. 19 Google Scholar.

96 Sert, ‘Centres of Community Life’, p. 11.

97 Wilk, Christopher, ‘The Healthy Body Culture’, in Modernism: Designing A New World, ed. Wilk, Christopher (London, 2006), pp. 249–96 Google Scholar; Overy, Paul, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture Between the Wars (London, 2008)Google Scholar.

98 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/5/4/2/1, Belgrade Theatre Annual Report 1957–58.

99 Ibid.

100 Woking, Surrey History Centre, 7018/2/146, scrapbook of clippings: Stage, 19 August 1965.

101 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/3/1/11161, letter from S. H. Newsome to Coventry City Council, 24 April 1949.

102 Martin Froy, ‘Report to the Arts Council’, typescript MS of 1 February 1954, copy in Froy’s private archive.

103 Froy, ‘Second Report’.

104 Froy, ‘Report’ [c. 1956].

105 Martin Froy, ‘Belgrade Theatre: Interior Decoration’, typescript MS of 1958 in Froy’s private archive, p. 1.

106 Shaw, Roy, The Arts and the People (London, 1987), p. 120 Google Scholar.

107 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Collection, Guildford file, uncat., Brownrigg, ‘Some Aspects of the Architectural Problem’, essay within the programme issued at the theatre opening [2 June 1965], n.p.

108 Froy, ‘Second Report’, p. 3, for the idea in the original scheme that the whole would be treated as a single entity. For the final scheme, see Froy, ‘Belgrade Theatre Interior Decoration’ [1958]: ‘it was agreed the entire surface ought to read as a whole’.

109 Survey of London, 23, Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs (London, 1994), pp. 229–30 Google Scholar.

110 Muthesius, Stefan, The Post-War University: Utopianist Campus and College (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 65 Google Scholar.

111 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Stage, 13 February 1958.

112 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/5/4/2/2, Belgrade Theatre Annual Report 1958–59. Interestingly, early designs for the Nottingham Playhouse included similar flats, but they were omitted in execution.

113 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Daily Mail, 13 March 1958.

114 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Observer, 30 March 1958.

115 Heathcote, David, Barbican: Penthouse Over the City (Chichester, 2004), pp. 199–207 Google Scholar.

116 ‘Theatre in Corporation Street, Coventry’, p. 202.

117 For example Sinfield, Alan, ‘The Government, the People and the Festival’, in Labour’s Promised Land? Culture and Society in Labour Britain, 1945–51, ed. Fyrth, Jim (London, 1995), pp. 181–97 Google Scholar; Hewison, Robert, Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940 (London, 1997), p. 118 Google Scholar.

118 Joseph, Stephen, ‘Introduction’, in Actor and Architect, ed. Joseph, Stephen (Manchester, 1964), pp. 1–29 Google Scholar (p. 9); see also Tyrone Guthrie’s essay in the same volume, p. 32.

119 ‘Theatre in Corporation Street, Coventry’, p. 202.

120 For more detailed discussion of the debates, see Short, Barrett and Fair, Geometry and Atmosphere, ch. 8.

121 ‘Should We Build New Theatres?’, The Times, 3 February 1961, p. 13.

122 For the Crucible, Sheffield, see Hampton, Antony, ‘Sheffield’s Theatre of the Future’, Sheffield Spectator, 7/51 (June 1969)Google Scholar, [n.p.].

123 See, for example, Curtis, William, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London, 1996), p. 13 Google Scholar.

124 PAC minutes, 4 January 1955; Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/1/1/29, Press clippings book: Coventry Standard, 23 November 1956; Coventry Evening Telegraph, 2 March 1957 and 1 April 1957.

125 There are conflicting accounts of the fate of the Midland Theatre Company (MTC). Some (for example Brian Legge, theatre technician, interviewed by the British Library Theatre Archive Project), suggest that it moved into the Belgrade. See the transcript at <www.bl.uk/theatrearchive/legge3.html> (accessed on 20 December 2010). However, the company was formally wound up in June 1957, closing with a performance of Philip Mackie’s Death in the Family. See The Times, 21 June 1957, p. 3, which stated that the Arts Council had decided to disband the company in anticipation of the new Belgrade opening the following spring. Perhaps they felt it was no longer needed, given the city council’s role in the new venue? Nonetheless, there was presumably a degree of continuity in terms of personnel between the MTC and the new repertory company at the Belgrade, which may have made the latter seem like the MTC in all but name.

126 Pearson, ‘The Belgrade’ (see n. 28 above).

127 Roderick Ham, interviewed by the author, October 2005. See also drawings made in the mid-1960s for a theatre annexe, including offices, a rehearsal room / studio theatre, and technical spaces: London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Collections, ACGB / 107 / 78, scheme of c. 1965 sent to the Arts Council of Great Britain.

128 Martin, Leslie, ‘Building London’s New Concert Hall’, The Listener, 17 August 1950, pp. 231–32 Google Scholar.

129 Richards, J. M., An Introduction to Modern Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1940), p. 10 Google Scholar.

130 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Theatre Collection, Colin Sorenson papers, THM/297, undated / untitled clipping about the Belgrade which refers to ‘scientific tests for “tuning” the auditorium’.

131 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Birmingham Mail, 19 March 1958.

132 For more on the Building Research Station, see Saint, Social Architecture, pp. 12–14; Lea, F. M., Science and Research: a History of the Building Research Station, (London, 1971)Google Scholar; also Melville, H., The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (London, 1972), pp. 121–27 Google Scholar.

133 Glendinning, ‘Teamwork or Masterwork?’, p. 297.

134 Froy, ‘Report’, 1 February 1954, p. 2.

135 Ibid., p. 2.

136 Ibid,, p. 3.

137 Froy, ‘Second Report’, p. 2.

138 Ibid.

139 Froy, ‘Belgrade Theatre: Interior Design’ [1958], p. 1.

140 Coventry, History Centre, CCA/TC/5/4/2/4, Belgrade Theatre Annual Report 1962–63.

141 Jay, Peter, ‘Theatres: Stage and Auditorium’, Architectural Review, 133 (1963), pp. 175–85 Google Scholar (p. 177).

142 ‘Coventry Civic Theatre’, The Times, 18 August 1955, p. 12.

143 For example, Coventry, History Centre, PA2313 / 5 / 2 /1, Press clippings book: The Times, 6 February 1958.

144 For the ‘democratic’ understanding of the Festival Hall, see Glendinning, Miles, ‘Teamwork or Masterwork? The Design and Reception of the Royal Festival Hall’, Architectural History, 46 (2003), pp. 277–319 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 277–78 and 290).

145 Letter of 14 March 1955 at Coventry, History Centre, filed within drawings bundle 39363A/B.

146 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/5/2/1, Press clippings book: Daily Mail, 13 March 1958. See also Financial Times, 28 March 1958: ‘functionally near-perfect for acoustics and vision’.

147 ‘Theatre in Corporation Street, Coventry’, p. 202.

148 Ham, Roderick, Theatre Planning (London, 1972), p. 43 Google Scholar.

149 Ham, Theatre Planning, p. 46.

150 Brownrigg, ‘Some Aspects’.

151 Ibid.; also Woking, Surrey History Centre, 7018 / 2 / 4 / 128, J. A. Brownrigg, ‘Designer’s Dilemma’, undated clipping from Surrey Advertiser.

152 For more on this, see Fair, Alistair, ‘The End of “Optimism and Expansiveness”? Designing for Drama in the 1970s’, Twentieth-Century Architecture, 10, The 1970s (forthcoming, 2012)Google Scholar.

153 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313 / 5 / 2 /1, Press clippings book: Observer, 30 March 1958.

154 Coventry, History Centre, PA2313/ 5/ 2/ 1, Press clippings book: Daily Mail, 13 March 1958.

155 Powers, Alan, ‘A Zebra at Villa Savoye: Interpreting the Modern House’, Twentieth-Century Architecture, 2, The Modern House Revisited (1996), pp. 15–26 Google Scholar (p. 19).

156 Carlson, Marvin, Places of Performance: the Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca, 1989), p. 187 Google Scholar, for this idea.

157 Richards, Modern Architecture, pp. 24–25.

158 Nottingham, Nottinghamshire Archives, DD/NP / 1 / 2 / 1/ 1, Nottingham Playhouse architects’ brief [late 1950s], pp. 1–2.

159 Arts Council of Great Britain, Annual Report, 1958–59, p. 27.

160 Woking, Surrey History Centre, 7018/2/146, scrapbook of clippings: Stage, 19 August 1965.

161 Bullock, Building the Post-War World, p. 7; Darling, Elizabeth, Re-forming Britain: Narratives of Modernity Before Reconstruction (London, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

162 Whyte, William, ‘The Modernist Moment at the University of Leeds’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), pp. 169–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 192–93)

163 Giedion, Sigfried, ‘Social Imagination’, in his Architecture, You and Me (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957), PP-157–77 Google Scholar (P-165)

164 Froy, ‘Belgrade Theatre Interior Decoration’.

165 Ibid., and Pearson, ‘The Belgrade’ (n. 28 above).

166 Quoted in Curtis, William, Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape (London, 1999), p. 154 Google Scholar.

167 Paulsson, Gregor et al., ‘In Search of a New Monumentality’, Architectural Review, 104 (1948), pp. 117–28 Google Scholar.

168 See, for example, Summerson, John, ‘The Mischievous Analogy’, in Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture (London, 1949), pp. 195–218 Google Scholar (pp. 203–05).

169 Paulsson et al., ‘New Monumentality’, p. 119.

170 Ibid., p. 117.

171 Crowley, David, ‘Europe Reconstructed, Europe Divided’, in Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970, ed. Crowley, David and Pavitt, Jane (London, 2008), pp. 43–65 Google Scholar (p. 56).

172 Ibid., p. 57.

173 Ibid., p. 57.

174 Giedion, ‘New Monumentality’, pp. 31 and 37.

175 Ibid., p. 39.

176 For example Sert, ‘Centres of Community Life’, p. 8: ‘the architect-planner can only help to build the containers within which this community life can take place’.

177 Ling, Arthur, ‘Satisfying Human Needs at the Core’, in Heart of the City, ed. Tyrwhitt, , Sert, and Rogers, , pp. 94–96 Google Scholar (p. 95).

178 Giedion, ‘New Monumentality’, p. 39.