Ark of Light - Architectural Review
Issue 1394
April 2013
Text Peter Salter
Images Denis Gilbert
Its delicate arboreal structure wrapped in an armature of stone, Ripon Collegeʼs new chapel is a subtle synthesis of nature and the sacred.
Ripon Chapel, designed by Níall McLaughlin Architects, sits in the garden of Ripon College, a theological centre on the edge of the village of Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire. The chapel sits off the brow of the hill, in deference to the parish church which can be seen on slightly rising ground. The site of the walled precinct of the college is not in the expected urban form of Oxford, but perhaps more like that of a model farm. It is reached by following country lanes that lead over a bridge, and is set among warm honey-coloured manor houses. As part of the client body, the Sisters of the Community of St. John the Baptist have relocated their convent to the precincts of Ripon College. The new chapel is a locus for their orders of prayer, their life-long commitment, and also becomes the context for the college’s theological reflection. Proposed courtyard accommodation of the convent has not been built.
The architecture of George Edmund Street’s college of 1854 sets the institutional tone for the complex. The open-sided courtyards and wings of buildings carry none of the tight quad form of the medieval Oxford college. The garden with its rather languid vegetation provides the over-sized site for the chapel, which is approached through a covered porch on the south side of the elliptical structure forming part of the sacristy.
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