The Long Fight to Touch Grass
Gabriel Mullins, Culture Editor, BA History & Nicholas Pratley, BA History
Despite its importance to SOAS’ institutional life, open space at the university is rarely talked about. Whilst our academic buildings have gradually encroached onto Bloomsbury’s lawns and gardens, the history of open space at SOAS has not been one of destruction, but of the creation of more student-friendly places. However, recent measures that have been imposed by the university’s governing authorities limit students’ access to open space on campus.
When on campus, we sometimes spend as much of our time outside buildings as we do inside of them. The relief that the precinct grants to those piling out of a packed lecture theatre often turns into twenty minutes spent smoking on a bench with a pair of anthropologists.
Much has been done over the last 50 years to draw the most teaching space out of SOAS’ estate, and with this expansion has come the gradual rehabilitation of the public space around the university. The construction of the Library (Phillips Building) on the South end of Woburn Square in 1974 involved the laying out of roof terraces and gardens around the building (all of which are currently inaccessible). Before the Brunei Gallery was opened in 1995, the whole site and the adjacent green was filled with parked cars and run-down 1940s ‘prefab’ huts, which used to house parts of the University of London’s administration and research institutes.
The block of glasswalled lecture rooms opposite the main stairs (RG01 etc.) and the learning lounge were both built in the late 90s, filling in courtyards in the main building. The Japanese Roof Garden on top of the gallery was a commission from an award-winning garden designer in the mid-2000s. What is now the paved and tree-lined area between our three buildings was also being used as car parking until the gallery was built.
Most recently, until about 2015, the ‘moat’ around the East end of the main building, which is now used as an outdoors space by the bar, was filled in with a redundant steel exit ramp, for which the Students’ Union successfully campaigned to get removed.
Notwithstanding the outward and upward growth of the school buildings, and the creation of purpose-built open spaces in tandem, campus still has a remainder of green space that has not been paved over. It is notable (given that we only have three of them) that all of SOAS’s green spaces were inaccessible to students for the majority of the 24/25 teaching period.
The lawn between the Brunei Gallery and the Paul Webley Wing is the most prominent green space on campus. Whilst it is managed directly by the University of London itself, SOAS has generally referred to the space as ‘the SOAS Green’ since its opening in 1995.
The green has been used by SOASians as a community space ever since (including over a period about 15 years ago during which the SU erected a yurt, purchased from a group of nomads). It has been renamed as the ‘Walter Rodney Freedom Square’ by the student body, but has been fenced off since the eviction of the SOAS Liberated Zone in August of 2024.
A strip of grass also runs along the West side of the Phillips Building, abutting Torrington Square. As far as we can tell, it belongs to SOAS. In regular use by students up until last summer, it has periodically been used to stage construction work on the Library and the Torrington Square side of SOAS, but has also been fenced off since the summer of 2024. This strip has recently been re-turfed, with trees planted along its centre and new railings built along its edge. As a result, the SOAS Herb Garden, which was formerly located at the North end of this strip, has now been destroyed, leaving only a mosaic and cement sign as evidence of its existence.
The iconic statue of Thiruvalluvar sits on an open lawn between the JCR and the South end of the Library, underneath an enormous London Plane tree. Having, again, been fenced off since the summer of 2024, a small section of the lawn was used to stage the Library’s massive roof repairs, and a paved path was built at the end of the year to provide access to the SU bar’s external gate. As of early 2025, it has been the first patch of grass at SOAS to re-open. It is the most visible part of campus, with the photo-op of the statue in front of the SOAS sign on the side of the Library.
SOAS has a complex relationship with the open space around its buildings, which are leased with a long tenure from the University of London. The opacity of the situation has worked to allow the university to avoid scrutiny on the management of this open space. Working with Camden Council and the Duke of Bedford, who both own the surrounding land, SOAS and the UoL coordinate the management of the ‘public realm’ around the university estate. It was out of this relationship that both the paved precinct between the buildings and the green were created in 1995, as mentioned, out of the former car park.
It is to the University of London’s authority that SOAS’ trustees defer when questioned about the injunctions placed on pro-Palestinian protests on the University estate, and to the continued fencing-off of Walter Rodney Freedom Square. The University has also not provided students with an explanation as to why its own lawns have remained shut for an extended period of time. It does not engage with students about the public realm around the university, and ‘outdoor space’ is not an area in which the Students’ Union at present undertakes any specific campaigning or representation work.
The University maintains that, “unlike many other universities, it does not control the public realm directly associated with its buildings, and the School must work closely with the University of London and Camden Borough Council to create and maintain attractive public spaces adjacent to its buildings.”
“2023-2028 Estates Strategy, Objective 9. i. - To work with the University of London and other stakeholders to make coordinated improvements to public realm associated with the campus, to improve outdoors amenity, arrival experience and space branding.” The ‘action’ section of SOAS’ current estate strategy makes only a single mention of the university’s outdoor space, which it refers to as that which is ‘associated’ with our campus (in other words the green and the precinct). The vagueness of this language avoids the actual concretion of our university’s relationship with the space around it, thereby diminishing our leadership’s responsibility to shape our outdoor space.
When, for a period at the end of the last academic year, the Liberated Zone was operating as a large, pluralistic community space on campus. It showed that there lies great potential in an open space that is cared for by, and serves the needs of, SOAS students. A ramp was constructed by volunteers to allow for disabled access to the green. Teaching took place on the square. There was even serious discussion amongst various groups on campus of approaching the UoL itself with plans to turn the area into a more permanent garden, once the occupation had achieved its aims. For now, the best that can be hoped for is that everyone at SOAS retains their ambition for freely accessible, inclusive, high-quality open space and, in the short term, that the community regains its ability to touch grass.