Concrete in Bloomsbury: University of London Redevelopment, Higher Education Governance, and Architectural Controversies in Central London, 1959–77

In post-war Britain, the expansion of higher education unfolded as part of the political project of the welfare state. Following the 1963 Robbins Report, new “plateglass universities” were built in modernist style. Concrete, often linked to prefabrication, standardisation, and rapid construction, came to characterise their physical form. This paper takes Denys Lasdun’s University of London Redevelopment Scheme in Bloomsbury, central London, as a case study to explore how concrete mediated the relationship between higher-education governance and the politics of architectural style from 1959 to 1977.

Unlike many university building programmes of the period, the Bloomsbury scheme suffered unusual delays and sustained controversy over its exposed-concrete language. Planned redevelopment around Woburn Square and Bedford Way, including accommodation for the Institute of Education, School of Oriental and African Studies, brought the University’s modernisation agenda into direct conflict with a district previously defined by Georgian terraces and squares. Proposals involving demolition of the Georgian terraces triggered public opposition in 1969, culminating in the so-called “Battle of Woburn Square.” Although preservationists were narrowly defeated in a University Convocation, disputes over Lasdun’s scheme persisted amid the growing hostility against modernist movement and ‘brutalist’ concrete style in 1970s Britain.

This paper traces how concrete was justified, and contested in the Bloomsbury scheme. It follows the debates along the bureaucratic chain of higher education governance. It examines how funding, approvals from external bodies, and phasing decisions shaped what could be built and when. Situating the redevelopment within postwar urban renewal and the politics of higher education expansion, it argues that concrete acted as an instrument of higher education governance. It not only translates educational needs of the British state to spatial form but also lies central in the conflicts among institutional planning, architectural vision, and public heritage concerns at the heart of the British metropole.