LSE Appoints McLaren for the UK’s Largest Passivhaus Retrofit Building

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• LSE Appoints McLaren for the UK’s Largest Passivhaus Retrofit Building

12 August 2025 | Updated 21 August 2025

McLaren Construction has won a contract to deliver a £100 million retrofit and extension of an existing 1950s building for the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The site at 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields will be home to the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, the Data Science Institute, Executive Education, the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, and an LSE Agora, a multi-purpose teaching and debating space.

The current  building sits between the Grade ll* listed Royal College of Surgeons and the Grade ll listed former Land Registry Building on the south side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a Grade ll Registered Park and Garden. 

It is expected to be the largest Passivhaus retrofit building in the UK. Approximately 60 per cent of the original building will be retained, after the top three floors and roof plant enclosure are demolished and replaced by a cross-laminated timber extension.

McLaren and David Chipperfield Architects will reuse parquet and timber flooring, brass inlays from wall panelling, various lighting fixtures, ceramic tiles and rainwater hoppers and both internal and external brickwork

The changes will increase the building's size from 9,856 square metres to 11,848 square metres. 

McLaren will take possession of the site in September 2025, with construction works commencing in January 2026 until January 2028, followed by direct works. The new building is scheduled for completion in 2027, ready for occupation from April 2028.

Picture: a CGI showing the proposed façade of the new building, showing an off-white painted brick. Image Credit: McLaren Construction

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 12 August 2025

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