ST CROSS GROUND BREAKING
FEBRUARY 2015
Building has started on our project for St. Cross College in Oxford. It will accommodate a library, seminar rooms and 53 post-graduate rooms just behind St. Giles. Soon after excavation started, we uncovered the shrouded remains of a woman buried in 1642 during the English Civil War. Oxford Archaeologists dated her from the coins that had been placed on her eyes. After a pause to remove the remains, the builders have started foundations around the historic walls. Completion is expected by May 2016.
A Ground Breaking Ceremony was held on the site on 27th February. Practical Completion of the building is anticipated in May 2016. You can follow progress on site by accessing the contractor’s webcam here (un:stcrosscollege; pw:oxford)
ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION OF AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE
JANUARY 2014
Niall McLaughlin has been invited to participate in a conference on Milson Island on the Hawkesbury River in Australia. Organised by the Architecture Foundation Australia, the residential event gathers an international field of speakers to explore a chosen theme. It will take place between the 28th and 30th of March 2014. This year’s theme will be ‘trace de la main’, taken from the comment by engineer Peter Rice that “whereas a Gothic cathedral will express the real and physical presence of the stone from which it was made, and of the masons who laboured over its construction so many years ago, very few modern buildings carry the same physical presence of the materials of which they were built. In short, ‘the trace de la main’, the evidence of those who built it, is not there.”