PEEKING from the plane trees that line the South Bank, the National Theatre looks like an angular cliff line, its twin fly-towers lording it over the ziggurat of terraces that wrap the building. Dwarfed by a proliferation of glass-and-steel high-rises, it looks almost fragile and it’s hard to believe this project once drew the ire of The King. In a late-1980s documentary, the then Prince Charles said the National Theatre was ‘a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London’. For others, however, the theatre —now listed Grade II*—was testament to the architectural genius of the man who designed it, Sir Denys Lasdun (1914–2001).
The scion of a Russian-Jewish family, Lasdun embraced architecture at the dawn of the 1930s. In his formative years, the Modern Movement dominated Europe and the house he designed in the late 1930s at No 32, Newton Road, Westbourne Grove, has echoes of Le Corbusier’s work. However, Lasdun ‘would argue that he had moved on. ‘In works such as the Royal College of Physicians (1960) and the National Theatre (1970) he interpreted the rituals of institutions while evoking the poetry of the British Baroque, the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor in particular. Lasdun was a unique artist who played what Lutyens called “the High Game”.’
