The SOAS building on Thornhaugh Street is part of the Bloomsbury campus cluster that includes Lasdun's Institute of Education nearby. A concrete and glass academic building designed with the same structural directness as Lasdun's other institutional work — the frame expressed, the floor plates readable, the materials undecorated.
Academic buildings of this type defined the physical expansion of British universities in the 1960s and 70s, as student numbers tripled and new faculties required new space quickly. The architecture was consequential: cheap concrete, universal plan, adaptable interior. That most of these buildings have aged poorly is partly a reflection of how quickly they were built and how little money was budgeted for their maintenance.