Firoz Lalji Global Hub at LSE

 

Firoz Lalji Global Hub at LSE

Our Conservation team worked with Alison Brooks Architects and Nigerian firm Studio Contra on design proposals for a new 12,540m2, £120m academic building at 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, formerly occupied by the Royal College of Surgeons. Of 190 entries, our team was one of five shortlisted to develop design proposals.

The site is situated within the Bloomsbury Conservation Area, and we provided heritage advice on the team’s design proposals, which aimed to express the cultural, economic and environmental significance of Africa on one of London’s most prominent civic stages, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The design proposed creating an accessible and transparent ground floor to serve as the building’s civic plinth, a gathering space for the Agora and threshold to the academic departments above. The 300 seat elliptical Agora would be the Firoz Lalji Global Hub’s epicentre.

Above this the building was to take the form of a c-shaped massing, a courtyard building that opens to the east. The courtyard would offer the Hub’s researchers and academics a still and reflective space in contrast to the outward facing, urban elevations. Its facades would be lined with glazed terracotta flutes in the tradition of 19th Century urban courtyard buildings.

Client: London School of Economics
Architects: Alison Brooks Architects
Images: Courtesy of the architect