Flood plain, industrial wharf and ‘tonic for the nation’ - over the past 80 years the Southbank has been all these things and today its distinct landscape is the outcome of concerted efforts to comprehensively reimagine it as both democratic hub and cultural cornucopia. Once the Surrey shore, the area long-played shabby support act to London-proper across the Thames, but from the early 1900s new civic ambition ushered in dramatic change with beaux arts government buildings, modernist people’s palaces and a citadel of brutalist galleries and theatres. From factories to the Festival of Britain, modernism to millennium this walk explores the buildings and spaces of the Southbank to reveal the politics and battlegrounds behind London’s most perpetual of playscapes.
A walking tour by The London Ambler - Mike Althorpe
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