We are improving our buildings in London to provide a high quality, flexible and sustainable environment for research and education. Investment in infrastructure was a key part of the LSHTM 2017-22 strategy and the estates masterplan underpins priorities in the 2022-27 strategy to enhance people’s experience of studying at, working at or visiting LSHTM.
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a light on the importance of our scientific rigour and ability to collaborate quickly and effectively with partners globally. In our evermore complex and unpredictable world, with more emerging threats to public health, we need to find ways to see over the horizon. Having the right kind of facilities is key to achieving our vision for a more healthy, sustainable and equitable world.
Tavistock Place
Work is under way to transform our Tavistock Place site to create better facilities for staff and students.
The building fronting the street at 15-17 Tavistock Place, previously known within LSHTM as TP1, will become a new teaching and learning centre. This will be dedicated to students, providing enhanced technology and modern education facilities for today’s digital and hybrid learning world. Students will be able to benefit from improved access and a purpose-built learning environment, while remaining close to other facilities such as the Library and laboratories in our nearby Keppel Street building.
Sitting behind the Tavistock Place 1 building is the Tavistock Place 2 building, which opened in 2023 and was LSHTM’s first completely new building on its London site since 1929.
Carefully designed by BMJ Architects to maximise the tightly constrained space, and shortlisted for the Architects' Journal Architecture Awards 2023 in the Higher Education category, it provides high-quality collaborative working space for researchers and professional services staff.
Next steps
The building fronting the street at our Tavistock Place site will be transformed for LSHTM students. The project involves demolition inside the building to open up the space and replace with light and airy purpose-built new teaching and learning facilities. It is scheduled for completion during the 2025/26 academic year.
LSHTM has been granted planning permission by Camden Council for the external works. They include new, improved signage as part of the entrance design, as well as decorative motifs of insects and other vectors of disease to complement the famous gilded vectors of disease around the edge of our art deco Keppel Street building. The plans include placing power plant and other equipment on the rooftop to free up space inside the building. To be more sustainable, the upgraded Tavistock Place teaching and learning centre will be heated via air source heat pumps, with solar panels on the roof to support power supply.
Community engagement
Our Tavistock Place buildings are in a more residential area than Keppel Street, with people living in homes next to and surrounding them. Therefore the work to transform the site involves close collaboration with community representatives. Find out more in this blog reflecting on many years of community engagement: Community engagement - why it matters.
This continues to be of great importance as we move to the next phase of works.
Find out more about the plans.
Keppel Street
Work is also continuing to sensitively refurbish and modernise parts of our art deco building at Keppel Street, including upgrades to laboratories and social space used by staff and students such as the Refectory and bar area. The new social space will be called The Pumphandle Social, a reference to one of the founders of modern epidemiology, Dr John Snow. He removed the Broad Street pump handle in Soho, after he identified that contaminated water from the public pump was the source of deadly cholera during the 1854 outbreak in London. The Pumphandle Social is due to open in autumn 2024.
Activities across the sites will complement and enhance each other to maximise real-world impact. Through research excellence, global reach and impact, LSHTM will continue to work with partners around the world to find solutions to the most important challenges in health and to train the future generation of health leaders.