High drams

摘要

Architect Bill Howell was drawn into the design of the Young Vic by a bylaw query in the late 1960s. Later Frank Dunlop, the theatre's founder, explained that one of the reasons he had sought an old building for a base was to avoid having to use an architect. What Howell put together on a tiny budget of £75,000 was a steel frame infilled with concrete blocks. For the entrance he used a Victorian butcher's shop, one of the few remnants on the bombsite near London's Waterloo Station. The lifespan was expected to be five years.