John Henry Brookes & Abercrombie Building, Oxford Brookes University

Oxford, United Kingdom

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John Henry Brookes & Abercrombie Building, Oxford Brookes University

Oxford, United Kingdom

Firm

Design Engine Architects Ltd.

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant
Cultural › Hall/Theater Cultural Center
Educational › University Auditorium Library

YEAR

2014

SIZE

100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

BUDGET

$100M +

At the core of the concept is the ambition to bring cohesion to a disparate campus; integrating existing buildings with new central student facilities. These links provide fluid movement across the new campus for the first time, where academic spaces co-exist with social areas for the enjoyment of students and staff alike.
Above all, the scheme provides adaptable and flexible accommodation for changing curricula and teaching patterns. Designed from first principles for low- energy consumption in construction and in use, the John Henry Brookes and Abercrombie Building are designed to meet the University’s vision for a ‘holistic approach to enhancing the student experience’.

To achieve the University’s vision for a holistic approach the new building needed to contain a critical mass of accommodation. This includes social learning spaces, main library, lecture theatre, teaching rooms and catering.

To give cohesion to the whole the core conceptual idea of a central glowing box being interpenetrated by pegs, which reach out to interconnect to the existing campus has been developed.

These three pegs, whilst fulfilling the need for new and better university space, crucially provide the enclosure to a series of new but different external spaces. The Colonnade peg running towards London Road will form the Eastern boundary to the new Piazza. The Abercrombie peg creates a new façade to the Southern edge of a re-modelled central courtyard. And finally the Pooled Teaching and Food Hall peg forms the edge to a future courtyard behind Sinclair as well as new western courtyard and terrace.