RIBA EAST AWARD WINNER
MAY 2022
Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."
CATHERINE HUGHES BUILDING PLANNING APPROVAL
MAY 2017
Our new student accommodation scheme for Somerville College, has been awarded planning approval unanimously by Oxford City Council. The project, known as the Catherine Hughes Building, will provide 68 bedrooms, allowing the College to accommodate all their undergraduates on site. This is our third building for Somerville College, further to our work on the ROQ student housing and the extension to the Philip Dowson designed Wolfson building.
The new building has a frontage on to Walton Street, with a Graduate Reading Room at ground floor level. The use of red brick will reflect the neighbouring buildings, with articulated brickwork elements around generous windows to provide a rhythm to the façade. Framed setbacks at third floor level allow the new building to align with key levels on the adjacent Penrose Building and to provide variety to the roof line. Internally, bedrooms are arranged in to clusters with kitchens and circulation spaces utilising direct and borrowed natural light and forming focal points for social activity.
Enabling works, involving the demolition of existing buildings, are due to commence in the next few months, with the main construction expected to start on site at the beginning of 2018.