An Institute for Education
They wouldn’t build something like the Institute of Education today. The accountants slide rule would rule it out. Budgets don’t allow for such imagination. Now every parcel of land has to profit from your presence.
The building is too bold for them. There’s a wide open area at the front and spare air around each stepped layer. Such generosity of space is a vacuum for the bean counters.
The Grade II*1 listed Institute for Education was built for The University of London between 1970-76 in Bloomsbury. Half a century earlier the area was home to the influential Bloomsbury Group2. It still has an air of intellectual bohemianism where brutalist buildings can sit happily alongside Georgian squares.
The architects were Denys Lasdun & Partners3. They also designed the nearby Royal College of Physicians (1960-64) and The National Theatre (1967-76) which I waxed lyrical about here:
It doesn’t have a flat, uniform facade of glass edged by steel so beloved by today’s accountants. It asks more of you than that. The levels are stepped, the materials are varied.
Look at it again and you’ll see something you hadn’t noticed before. A small detail, an oversized staircase, a contrasting texture.
Something to make you think a little. An education in awareness.
From the street, the building is monumental. It spans the length of Bedford Way (the equivalent of three rugby pitches). Perhaps a tad longer than had been hoped… the Institute’s Secretary Willis Dixon wrote: “We did not want long corridors, in which if you lie on the floor you can detect the curvature of the earth”.
Its largesse celebrated the expansion of higher education as grants made university more accessible to a wider range of people. No longer was private schooling a pre-requisite.
Opposite the Institute sits the perfect companion - an extension to the School of Oriental and African Studies. Also designed by Lasdun and completed in 1970.
I was lucky when I strolled by. The sun came out and I was in my special place. Skipping around optimistically built brutalist buildings, camera in hand. Relieved that the tide is turning and some people are realising that these concrete buildings are as important as the revered Georgian terraces surrounding it.
More reading on the Institution of Education
All photos taken with my trust Leica Q on Thursday 15th February 2024.
Listing marks and celebrates a building's special architectural and historic interest.
Artists, writers, intellectuals and philosophers were part of an informal and highly influential group in early 20th century Bloomsbury.
Denys Lasdun was a marvellous architect. You can read more about him on Wikipedia and Architectuul.
Great photos Andrew! You/I might have mentioned this before, but there's so many similarities between brutalist architecture around the country, local to me is Leeds University, as well as banks an building societys in Halifax and Bradford.
All of this style building tend to be incredible for skateboarders to use, something that must be entirely coincidence, most being built in the very early days of the sport, mindblowing to me really.
Really cool photos, Andrew!