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The Southbank Centre is to undergo a radical £120 million transformation that includes a new glass pavilion in the sky, it was announced today.

The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery are to be re-named the Festival Wing and closed for up to three years while the revamp takes place. But the end result will be new space for performances, exhibitions and socialising carved out of reclaimed and forgotten corridors and plant works on the 21-acre site.

The project will bring the Sixties buildings up to the standard of the slightly older Royal Festival Hall which underwent a renovation at similar cost six years ago.

The aim is to make a world-class cultural centre fit for the 21st century and more capable of welcoming the 25 million who now pour into the South Bank every year, including eight million attending events. Jude Kelly, the Southbank Centre’s artistic director, said she wanted to turn the Festival Wing from a neglected “Cinderella space” into a third pavilion between the National Theatre and the Royal Festival Hall.

She said the site was “tired and under-nourished” but there was a swell of support to capitalise on the buzz that followed the Festival Hall re-development. “It would be unforgivable if we didn’t seize the moment. London deserves for the site not to carry on being neglected.

"We’re going to raise the money because to just refurbish would leave another generation of people having to pick up the baton for the changes that need to be made,” she said.

The QEH and gallery will be united with a new glazed foyer on the roof of which will “float” the glass pavilion designed to achieve the first-class acoustics that critics claim the Festival Hall lacks.

The overhaul will also include new roof gardens, undercroft venues for gigs and cabaret and a building alongside Waterloo Bridge — echoing the offices and restaurants on the neighbouring Hungerford Bridge — which will house a new national literature centre and the poetry library.

The riverside skateboarders and graffiti artists will be offered an alternative home as more shops and restaurants are developed at ground level.

The plans, by architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, will go out for consultation with the aim of seeking planning permission in late spring and starting work in the autumn of next year. The vision has broad cross-party support from Boris Johnson, Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall, and councillors.

The Southbank Centre has secured £20 million support from the Arts Council for the upgrading of the auditoria and to address problems such as poor access and backstage areas.