Sir Denys Lasdun

Sir Denys Lasdun0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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Our castaway this week is the architect of the National Theatre, Sir Denis Lasden.

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So, Dennis, there's a theory that music and architecture have much in common, that they go together.

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Of course they do. Uh there there is and as Goethe said, I or somebody said it, architecture is frozen music, but

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It's very difficult to pinpoint what the connection is, except that there is a connection. There is a an order and a structure about music which has its parallel.

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in the more abstract side of architecture. Do you play an instrument yourself? Oh, very badly. I mean, I used to play the piano a bit, but hardly at all. Do you play records a lot? Yes, I do. What's the first one you've chosen for your desert island? I've chosen Monteverdi's coronation of Poppier, and I in particular the

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The last song, the love song between Poppier and Nero, which I think is just a lovely, beautiful love song.

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Pretty good.

Speaker 31:51

Oh.

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The closing duet from Monte Verde's The Coronation of Papillia, Magda Laszlo and Richard Lewis.

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Could you adjust yourself to solitude on this island?

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I think I'd find it very difficult. I'm so used to talking things over with particularly my wife. I think I w yes, I would find it very difficult. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

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Well, I suppose the

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rather strong pressures that materialism generally seems to bring with it. I think so much of our life is spent sort of rushing around with no particular productive purpose. I'm quite relieved to get away from that.

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What's your second record?

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Well I'd like I think Bach suite number two in B minor for flute and orchestra. I think because I do like the sound of flute. My daughter plays the flute and I wouldn't want to be on a desert island without Bach or some form.

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Prior to the first movement of the Bach suite number two,

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The English Chamber Orchestra, directed by Raymond Lepard.

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You're a Londoner?

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I know you were educated at rugby. When did you start taking an interest in design in and in buildings?

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So far as design is concerned, I I I'm very much

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I had my eyes opened by my art master at Rugby, Tolbukele, who's a very good painter of birds.

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Where did you go to study architecture?

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I went to the Architectural Association in London.

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As a student, did you travel much? Yes, I um went and uh was very excited by the early buildings of Corbusier in in in in and around Paris. Yes. He was a major influence for you. Oh, m yes, certainly. So you graduated. What was the next step to join a firm as as a junior? Well, I didn't even wait to finish my studies. I I became very, very excited by architecture and very impatient. I'm a bit impatient by nature, I suppose. So I went at the end of the third year at DAA to work with Wells Coates. He was a pioneer of modern architecture in this country.

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And I learnt a great deal from him. What was the first building of which you could say, That's mine?

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Well, it's a fairly disgusting little building. It was a little house that I did for a young married couple while I was a second-year student. I met them at a party and they were moaning they couldn't find a house and I rather rashly said, well, why not build one? I'll build you one. And I got a letter the next day offering me £50 to design them a house, which I did. I bought a second-hand Austin 7 and I went down from London to Esha every morning at 6 to supervise the building of this house. And then I got back to the AA for my studies by 10 o'clock. And it still stands, but I can't... It's all mine, but I'm not terribly proud of it. What a shame.

Sir Denys Lasdun6:15

Still step.

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Your third record, please. Uh I'd like Schubert's string quintet in C major. Why?

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I think I'm not very good on my history, but I think it was written shortly before his death and there's a great s urgency about the work. He he felt he had to say something and I

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Have a great sympathy for this feeling.

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The beginning of the second movement of Schubert's Quintet in C major, the augmented Amadeus Quartet.

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Your career was very quickly interrupted by the war. You you joined the Royal Engineers. Yes. You were building airfield.

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Yes, I built I'm almost sure I built the first one in um

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In France. Mm-hmm. You landed in France on D-Day, I believe. Yes, I landed on the fifth hour and we were busy making that first landing strip for the fighter planes.

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Oh, it was ready by the next day. Getting the equipment ashore must have been uh y you needed some heavy equipment ashore. I had very heavy equipment, earth moving equipment, all of which was landed in about eight foot of sea water. It all had to be waterproofed and um

Sir Denys Lasdun8:11

Hurrah.

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It was very exciting getting this stuff to the beaches and then straight to our site and and we were so busy, you know, we weren't worrying about the uh bombing and the gunfire, etc. We were busy doing this airfield. And then you moved on into Belgium and Germany doing the same job? Well, there was a rather nice little episode. Uh until the bridgehead got bigger there was nothing more you could do so I used to wander around and I was walking in an orchard and I found a magnificent

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Chestnut horse, sixteen hands.

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Obviously it had belonged to a German officer and I befriended him. He was a bit wounded and I bathed his forelock or whatever. I don't know much about horses, but I we got on very well and um my batman, who was useless as a batman, he knew a lot about horses and uh we converted a three ton army truck.

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into a mobile stable.

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And that horse travelled with me right through the next nine months.

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In spite of Montgomery's orders that nobody was to transport livestock anywhere.

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And we used to make advanced airfields as best we could where the finest stables in Europe were available for my horse. What happened to your horse eventually? Well, he stuck his head out of a three-ton truck straight into the face of the military police and he was uh confiscated and I never saw him again.

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Well, after six years back to your own work, there was obviously plenty of scope for an architect after the war. Now, was your kind of architecture immediately in demand?

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My sort of architecture is closely identified with not the great private palace, but with buildings of some sort of social need. And so the immediate priorities after the war was to provide housing for people without homes, and I got very involved with housing.

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Yes.

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And then after housing it was schools and I became involved with schools with my partners. You designed a lot of university buildings. In in fact, more than one complete university.

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Well, East Anglia, I with with my partners, Red House and Softly, we designed the master plan for um the East Anglia University and built the the nucleus. And also we're doing a very large scheme as an extension of London University.

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And being mostly on open sites, universities give scope for the platforms and bridges and terraces that that you like to construct. This is a sort of language of architecture which I'm very keen on. I didn't think it applies only to open sites. I mean, it has its relevance for city sites as well.

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And well, for about a hundred years or or whatever it is, that there's been agitation in certain quarters for a national theatre, and at last in the early sixties it looked as if we might get one.

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It's the sort of project for which usually a design competition is held.

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I think the people who interviewed me, from Olivier downwards, were very frightened of being saddled with some expert in theatre design which would tell them, you know, what the National Theatre should be about, whether they were trying to discover what it should be about.

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that they rather welcomed working with somebody first of all who'd never done a theatre, and was willing to sit round a table with them.

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and iron the thing out and really discuss it uh in a participatory way.

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And I think this was the only way that the National Theatre could have been designed. It could never have been designed as a competition. It had to evolve as a as a matter of consultation with the theatre technicians, with the actors and directors.

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Principally with the directors, with with the with the real intelligence of the theatre. I mean, there was an an incredible uh collection of theatre minds on that building committee.

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It really is how all buildings should evolve, not only theatre.

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Let's break for record number four. What's that? Well, I picked Beethoven Quartet number seventeen in B-flat, Grosser Fugue. Uh it's it's an incredible work. It's austere, but it's very beautiful.

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The opening of the Grosser Fugue, Beethoven's Quartet No. seventeen, opus one three three by the Hungarian Quartet.

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Now, the National Theatre because the other buildings in the South Bank Arts Complex were in concrete, did you have to use it as well? No, I didn't have to. I mean, I chose to use concrete.

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But that is very much connected, that choice, with the form of the building, the the actual form you were mentioning before, the sort of terraces that I do in my buildings. It's reinforced concrete that can make these forms.

Sir Denys Lasdun13:56

Yeah.

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And that's really why I chose concrete. There are now three theatres in the one complex. What was the thinking behind that? Wasn't that an extravagance? Three auditoriums in the one building? Well, originally the brief said let's have an adaptable theatre that can do everything. An all-purpose theatre. An all-purpose. Well, you see, all-purpose things, as we all know, never do anything properly.

Sir Denys Lasdun14:20

Yeah.

Presenter14:25

And there are three theatres for, I think, very sound reasons. The National Theatre has to offer the public what the mainstream of Greek and Elizabethan drama had to offer. That's an open sort of stage. It has to offer a spatial relationship which is called a proscenium stage for which playwrights of the last 300 years have written and will continue to write. So that's two theatres. And like any big organization, it must have an eye to its future for young playwrights, young designers, young directors to be able to experiment.

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without being thrust into a big auditorium in a small studio theatre, so you have to have three theatres.

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How long did your consultations go on in into the shape, the size, the planning of the three wars? Well, the Olivier Theatre alone.

Sir Denys Lasdun15:19

Well on

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Which was the point of departure of the whole thing. We decided we must

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understand the nature of the main auditorium inside the building. We had no idea what the outside of the building would look like in these days. We had to understand the nature of that

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Olivier Theatre.

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before we could get anywhere, and that took

Sir Denys Lasdun15:40

Anyway, I

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Certainly two years. Yes. So you were given the go-ahead to start building, to start planning when? Oh, much later. I mean, there were so many hold-ups. First of all, I mean, the whole National Theatre has been a political football. Um it was held up because there were arguments as to how big the auditoria should be, how many people should be allowed, and that's a very that was a long drawn-out argument and a very interesting one because

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The whole point of theatre is that it should be small.

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Intimate. The relationship between actor and audience is is is very precious in a in an age of mass media, cinema and television.

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But of course people supplying the money wanted them as big as possible, so there's a big conflict, you know. And we couldn't get on with the designs until we knew, you know, what was the capacity of the auditorium.

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So that was a hold up. And then of course there were financial hold ups because money was escalating costs were escalating.

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And that was again a matter of debate politically. I mean, it it's had a very troubled passage. But anyhow, it's it's now there. Indeed. Record number five. I believe you've got another Beethoven disc. Yes, I'd like the seventh symphony in A major. I find this again sublime and austere and quite wonderful.

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The beginning of the second movement of the Beethoven Seventh Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Schmidt Isserstedt.

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So at last, after, what, thirteen years and sixteen million pounds,

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The National Theatre is working, or 80% of it is working. Now you've designed not merely the building, but the details of the building.

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I I believe, in fact, that you even chosen the crockery to be used in the restaurant.

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Well, really I think an architect's job is to

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Pursue the detail as well as the broader issues, and we have not designed the crockery, but taking.

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Within the budgets that we're allowed we have

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selected the crockery, the cuttery. My wife worked with me, she's worked with me on many buildings, is responsible for the colours and te and the textiles, which are very much part of the architecture.

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which are very successful too.

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I think they are. They're they're quiet, and the building is a quiet building.

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I am very fussy what goes into the building.

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Well, I think you're going to get very many satisfied customers for a good long time.

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Let's have record number six.

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Well, I would want

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I think with Miya Desda, some reminder.

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of change.

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And so I've picked Schoenberg's Wind Quintet over Twenty Six, which is a sort of early use of twelve tone scale and another step on the rung of musical evolution.

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The rondo from Schoenberg's quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, played by the Westwood Wind Quintet. Now, Sir Dennis, you've shown indeed that you can visualise and direct the construction of buildings, but how well could you do the actual jobs yourself? You're on this desert island. Could you build a shelter?

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Oh, I think so. It wouldn't be a very good one, but I I could make myself a shelter. It should stand up, at any rate. It should, yes. Can you cultivate and fish?

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Not very well, but I suppose I would

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I think I cope. Sailing's a hobby of yours, isn't it? Yes, I sail with both my sons.

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I am frightened of it, but I enjoy it.

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Could you construct some kind of craft?

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Oh, it would be a pretty ropey old thing, but I I could do something. Would you try to escape? No.

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Very sensible. Let's have record number seven.

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I think I'd want a traditional blues with me. I'm very fond of blues, and I'd like perhaps Johnny Shine's I Don't Know.

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Well, I don't know, I don't know.

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What will he do? I really can't tell.

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Well, I don't know, I don't know.

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But boom yeah, I really can't tell.

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But from where I stand, maybe.

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Johnny Shine singing I Don't Know

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We've talked mostly about the National Theatre, of course, but

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You have built so many other buildings.

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What are you working on next?

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Well, we're now working on a building in Luxembourg, a very interesting conference centre. It's a monetary fund headquarters for the EEC.

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We come now to your last record.

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Well, I think for my last I'd like Mozart's Symphony No. 40, with Britain conducting, as I understand it, it's it's it's Mozart seeming to accept his fate with a certain amount of resignation.

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The opening of the third movement of Mozart's Symphony No. forty in G minor.

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Bentamin Britton conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. If you could take only one disc of the eight, which would it be?

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I think I'd take the Mozart.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you nothing of any practical use.

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A telescope. Mm-hmm.

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With a view to what in particular?

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Just gazing at the night sky.

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I think something to do in the evenings.

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And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. Oh, I think it would have to be a book which explained what the night sky was all about.

Presenter23:51

Right. And thank you, Sir Dennis Lasden, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Well, thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Denys Lasdun24:08

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.