The Architectural Competition

The Steering Committee for the Community Centre and Concert Hall (which became a formal Board incorporated under the Queen’s Hall Ordinance of 1959) continued raising funds based on the assumption that the Hall would occupy a disused airplane hangar – much in keeping with Mr Fraser Reekie’s drawings.  But suggestions appear in the minutes of many meetings that there were those who questioned the wisdom of using a hangar.  One person wondered whether the structure itself would be strong enough, or indeed capable of hosting the types of events for which it was required.  Another considered the price of removing the hangar from Piarco and converting it into a concert hall – was it worth the expense? 

It seems as though the Board decided it wasn’t, and in late 1955, a Caribbean-wide architectural competition was launched.  It was, by all accounts, the first regional competition of its kind.  A small advertisment entitled “Contest for Concert Hall Plan”, appeared in newspapers all around the Caribbean, including The Royal Gazette (Bermuda), The Daily Gleaner (Jamaica), and The Barbados Advocate.  In Trinidad, it was reported that, “the scheme of using a hangar offered by Government has been abandoned by the Theatre Concert Hall Board, and an architectural competition opened.
“The decision was taken when it was pointed out that not only would the hangar always remain a hangar, but that the cost of converting the interior would be approximately the same as the new hall.”18

The Chief Architect in Trinidad’s Works and Hydraulics Department, Mr J. R. Firth, was chosen as the assessor of the competition, and using RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) guidelines, along with the brief prepared by the Community Centre Concert Hall (CCCH) Board, the rules and requirements of the competition were drawn up. The winner would receive $1500 and the contract to design Queen’s Hall. 
The General Information of the competition, stated that a building was to be designed to cost, “a sum not exceeding $220,000.”

Entries were received from architectural practices in a number of territories: Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica and St Lucia.  The competition was conducted under strict enforcement of anonymity.  Entries were numbered and names not disclosed until the official announcement of the winners.
It made front-page news in 1956, when it was announced that local architect, Colin Laird, had won the competition.  Laird says the now-iconographic shape and structure of Queen’s Hall’s roof – a two-inch-thick inverted corrugated catenary roof - was used because it was the least expensive roof he and engineer, David Key, could design.  It’s likely that this feature is what tipped the scales in Laird’s favour.  The assessor’s report noted of Laird’s design, that “its economy comes from its roof structure, where repetition of units ‘pays off’ after the first bay…”19 

Given the constraints of the budget, the CCCH Board was aware that compromise would be a key element in ensuring the Hall got built.  Laird admitted that the acoustics in the Hall would only suit certain types of events: “Preference has naturally been given to achieving perfection for certain uses only, the other uses… are allowed to take second place by virtue of either the extreme cost involved, the future plans for an Intimate Theatre [etc] or because these slightly sub-perfect conditions are still a great improvement on any similar existing building in Trinidad.”20

The CCCH board now had a set of working drawings.  But it would be another three years before construction on the Hall would begin.  As has already been mentioned, the contentions surrounding the King George V Park remained a constant bugbear, with the St Anns alternative being settled on in 1958.  And despite continued fund-raising efforts, it seems as though public interest in the project waned in the period between 1956 and early 1958 – at one point, May Johnstone complained to a peer that the press seemed to have all but lost interest in the CCCH.  But in late March 1958, May Johnstone, turned the sod to mark the beginning of construction of the Hall. 

It’s likely that what started people talking about the Concert Hall again, was the greatly anticipated West Indies Festival of Arts, which coincided with Princess Margaret’s visit to Trinidad to preside over the launch of the Federal Parliament.

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