Chipperfield team wins £100m LSE Lincoln’s Inn Fields competition

David Chipperfield Architects with Feix and Merlin have been announced as the winners of a limited competition to design a new £100m-plus academic building for the London School of Economics on Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The six design teams included Alison Brooks Architects, with Nigerian practice Studio Contra; David Chipperfield Architects with south-east London-based Feix & Merlin Architects; and John McAslan & Partners, working with US practice Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

Also in the running to redevelop the former Royal College of Surgeons building at 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields for the project were Belfast-based Hall McKnight; Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios working with Danish practice Lendager; and a joint bid from Denmark’s Dorte Mandrup with John Robertson Architects.

The building will house the Firoz Lalji Africa Institute, Executive Education, the Departments of Mathematics, Statistics and Methodology, the Data Science Institute and conference facilities that will help to connect and engage LSE’s global community.

LSE’s brief was for a new academic building of 12,540 sq m. The project is also expected to be LSE’s first net-zero carbon building.

When he launched the RIBA-run competition in December, LSE director of estates Julian Robinson stated that project at 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields was likely to be the university’s last major building project for the foreseeable future.