RESOLUTION TO GRANT PLANNING PERMISSION TO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OXFORD PASSED
OCTOBER 2020
Oxford City Council has passed a resolution to grant planning permission to University College Oxford (‘Univ’) for a new collegiate development in the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area (NOVSCA). The scheme is for 150 new student bedrooms and represents the largest addition to the College in over three centuries. Niall McLaughlin Architects and Kim Wilkie won the commission in 2018 following an architectural competition.
The development – Univ North – will complement Univ’s High Street site in the city centre, and will enrich the College’s existing satellite annexe in north Oxford. Designed as an extensive, landscape-led proposal, the development will provide accommodation and facilities to encourage and nurture a multi-generational community. The whole development site embraces an existing care home and proposes new accommodation for undergraduates, postgraduates and early career academics along with a children’s nursery. In addition, the site will house a student café, a gym, ancillary study rooms, and a multipurpose common space for College events to which it is hoped the local community will join.
The scheme has been designed to improve the setting of the existing buildings and specimen trees by removing unsympathetic extensions and planting. Existing and new buildings frame a series of richly planted open, south-facing gardens and courts that are connected by a principal east-west path. The architecture and massing of the new buildings varies across the site as they respond to the immediate context in differing Character Areas that include Victorian and Edwardian villas, and notable modern buildings by Sir Philip Dowson and Geoffrey Beard. Existing and new buildings frame a series of richly planted open, south-facing gardens and courts that are connected by a principal east-west path. The architecture and massing of the new buildings varies across the site as they respond to the immediate context in differing Character Areas that include Victorian and Edwardian villas, and notable modern buildings by Sir Philip Dowson and Geoffrey Beard.
Sir Ivor Crewe, Master of University College at the time, said: “We are delighted that the City Council has supported our proposals for Univ North. It is a very exciting project, which will enable the College to deepen our own accommodation provision and support for future generations of students and academics studying at Univ.”
A STONE GLOSSARY
MAY 2018
William ‘Strata’ Smith’s 1815 Geological Map, the first nationwide geological map ever published.
We are in the process of choosing the stone to be used for a new building in Cambridge. It has been an apparently exhaustive journey through marbles and limestones from the UK, Europe and beyond. We amass endless samples, and talk in detail to quarrymen, masons and engineers about bed heights, weathering, and reliability of supply, as well as the inevitable costs to quarry the stone, cut it to shape, and fix it together to form a building. One of the most fascinating elements of this process are the specialist terms used to describe building stones and their properties. Below is a list of a few favourite words, ordered to explain the material properties that have so far governed our explorations for this new project.
The Clipsham Quarry at Rutland in Lincolnshire. Clipsham Stone occurs in the Inferior Oolite of the Jurassic System, where it was laid down between 174 and 163 million years ago. Clipsham is a popular building limestone with a characteristic golden colour. We have recently worked with it at Bishop Edward King Chapel in Cuddesdon and the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Oxford.
Bedding plane
Many building stones, including all limestones, are sedimentary rocks, formed by the gradual settlement and compression of underwater sediment over millions of years. The directional way in which they were formed governs their properties and how they can be used as building stones. Most UK limestones must be used ‘naturally bedded’, i.e. orientated in the building in the same way that they were formed in the ground. This means the height of the blocks is limited to the depth of the bed, rarely more than 1m in the UK. ‘Face-bedding’, when blocks are laid so their bedding planes are parallel with the vertical face of the block, can lead to rapid weathering and crumbling.
Metamorphic
A stone that began as another type of rock and changed as a result of exposure to heat and pressure over geological time. Marble was originally limestone, and is chemically identical to it. However, the metamorphic processes changed its physical properties so that it does not have bedding planes, and can be cut and orientated in any direction. This makes it ideal if tall blocks are required.
Precipitation
The chemical process by which Travertine is formed, usually when geothermally heated water is exposed to the air, causing it to degas and carbonate minerals to precipitate out from the water. Although a type of limestone, its distinctive formation means it also doesn’t have bedding planes and is workable in much longer, thinner pieces than sedimentary stones.
Oolitic
A type of limestone made from an amalgamation of individual grains called ooliths. An oolith is a tiny carbonate particle surrounded by concentric layers of calcium carbonate, which were deposited as the ooliths were rolled around on the bed of the clear shallow sea in which the stone was formed. This gives the stone an even structure so it can be cut or sculpted in any direction, a characteristic which makes oolitic stones ‘freestones’. Portland Stone is an oolitic limestone used extensively in London’s historic buildings, perhaps most famously in churches by Cristopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, including St Paul’s Cathedral and Christ Church Spitalfields.