Back to Projects Keble College, Oxford

This residential building is located on an extremely constricted site, with the significant presence of the High-Church-Anglican-Gothic buildings of William Butterfield across the yard. It is conceived as a ‘wall’, one room thick, 5 storeys high, separating the garden from the street. The building coils at one end to form a small quadrangle.

The side which overlooks the street is austere and built in brick, punctuated by vertical service tower which provide access to the rooms. On the inside of this protective shell, the building exposes a glazed facade, composed of overlapping sheets of glass that descend to cover a continuous walkway. This walkway becomes the pattern, or seed, of the movement and generation of the building along the site edge.

A third phase of development consisted of alterations and extensions to other buildings in the College, with outstanding new furniture detailing.

Awards:

  • 1978 - RIBA Architecture Award Listed Building, Grade II, England
  • 1981 - Carpenters Award
Photographs by John Donat