The initial concept was designed, with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, as an addition to the Southbank Centre arts complex by team leader Norman Engleback, assisted by John Attenborough, Ron Herron and Warren Chalk,[2] two members of the later founded group Archigram, of the Department of Architecture and Civic Design of the Greater London Council.

Warren Chalk then developed the site plan and connective first floor walkways, while Ron Herron worked on the acoustics for the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The Hayward's exhibition policy embraces visual art from all periods: past shows having included the works of Leonardo da Vinci to Edvard Munch and beyond.

The programme, however, has tended to concentrate on surveys of contemporary art which complement the spaces and powerful concrete structure of the building, such as those of works by Dan Flavin and Antony Gormley.

This almost hidden private entrance is located below the foyer and external walkway on the north facade, above the car park and near the overhanging Purcell Room auditorium.

Screens formerly advertised the National Film Theatre (the BFI Southbank from 2007) and Museum of the Moving Image enclosed the car park by the central access road.

[7] The roof terrace at the south end and linking bridge to the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer building is closed to the public, which makes impossible some of the more interesting pedestrian circulation opportunities of the original design, although these were opened for the Summer of Fun festival in 2011.

A plant room occupies the lower level at the east end, above the car park, with a great concrete exhaust stack by Waterloo Bridge.

This is exacerbated by the positioning of the car park and loading bay entrances, a legacy of the original 1960's design ideas about vertical separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic.

A proposed scheme selected from an architectural competition, designed by Richard Rogers, in the early 1990s would have involved covering all three buildings in a great wave-shaped glass roof, which would have linked the Royal Festival Hall to Waterloo Bridge.