LSE Library: The British Library of Political and Economic Science - London

Yanitza Avila

Cuando fui a la playa con mi papá en Puerto Padre fue una semana increíble.Ahí nos reímos,bailamos,bebimos y comimos Rica Comida Cubana cómo potsje de cjíchsto,srroz imperial y Rico café por las mañsnas.

Tim Oliver

A badly designed open-plan office that’s too noisy and which doubles as the LSE's student common room. There’s no denying that the collection is world-class and the staff can be brilliant. But it’s let down by a terrible design that’s more about looking good than being a good place to study. It means the Library has the bare-faced hypocrisy to display signs that read ‘We are studying just a few feet away... Please be considerate and keep this area SILENT’ when the biggest offender is only a few feet away in the form of the library’s own pair of exposed lifts. Yes, that’s right, in the middle of the library are to be found two exposed lifts, which means you and everyone else in the library get to constantly listen to the very loud and very annoying mechanical noises they make when they move. And then there’s the vanity project that is Norman Foster’s circular staircase. You’ll love the look of them, but despise them (and the architect, Norman Foster) after walking/limping up or down them just once. The dysfunctional helter-skelter that is the main staircase, and that there are only two lifts in the busiest building at LSE (?‍♂️), should tell you how much Foster put looks ahead of utility in his design. His open-plan design and large atrium with the two stupid lifts allows noise to travel too easily around the building. Ever since it was rebuilt and reopened in 2001, the library has struggled with the resulting noise problems. One way the library has tried to fight it is with lots of signs asking users to be silent. However, the problem is not overly noisy library users. The problem is that the design allows any noise to travel too easily and too far. The truth is that there won’t be a solution to the noise problems until the library undergoes a major rebuild and the open-plan office design is got rid of. You could, of course, try noise-cancelling headphones or ear plugs. But this is a library and supposed to be designed to be a place for silent study! If you’re looking for a silent place to work then I’m sad to say that your best course of action is to find somewhere else.

Veronika Juhász

I can only assume that the architects who designed this building had never been to a library before. That is the only explanation I can find for the bafflingly disfunctional design of this library.
It is exrtremely inconventient to use, does not offer enough study spaces and the ones it does offer do not have the variety needed.
And most of all, this library is very loud. The open staircase design in the middle with a loud elevator running through, the vents everywhere... you can not find one quite place in this building, and trust me, I have tried.
As punishment for their poor work, I would like to make the architects work from this building for the rest of their lives.

Josh Chia-Hsi Tsao

LSE頗有設計感的圖書館，但樓梯走起來挺累人

Ming

A fantastic library to read, study and research! Be prepared to spend lots of time here, especially nearing to exams!

O O

Extremely unpleasant staff ; rude and unhelpful ; and dismissed my needs without care. Difficult to comprehend how a top-level education facility can have such low standards of staff

Yuki

Awful ‘library’. The silent zones are never silent due to poor architectural decisions which allow sound to travel across the whole building. Probably the worst library I’ve ever been in (Birmingham library is good guys, go visit)

Linjun Peng

It’s beautiful from an architectural perspective but that’s the extend of the positive things I can say about it as a LSE student.

The library has awful seating arrangements, with too much space wasted for a spiral stairway that is uncomfortable to walk on because it doesn’t reflect normal strides (I.e. you have to take weird strides to go down the stairs, swapping between single and double steps). There is insufficient studying space and the air feels very stale. Not all desks have outlets so it can be a bit of a hunger game to find one that does.

Overall, there are much better places to study and the library is ill-suited for purpose.