New College, Oxford: the campus that's ahead of the curve

Quadrangles at Oxford University have one thing in common: they are, as the name suggests, at least roughly rectilinear. Or at least they have been until now, with the arrival of curved quads at the Gradel Quadrangles designed by David Kohn Architects for New College. 

Bends and bulges abound in every detail of an ensemble comprising 94 student bedrooms and ancillary facilities, offices, a concert hall, and a classroom wing for a prep school attached to the college. This disparate mix is distributed between three new buildings – a bijou porter’s lodge, a fluted tower and a horseshoe-shaped block – which, together, with three Edwardian villas frame a trio of interconnected courts. 

The flowing, curvilinear geometry is subtly organic, with hints of animal and mineral in the sinuous stone facades and reptilian scales of an undulating roofscape. It has produced a powerfully enigmatic place, where familiar features of the traditional quad have been recomposed into something strange, but atmospheric and distinctive. 

‘People might think this is wilful, gestural form-making on the part of the architect,’ says Kohn, as we survey the complex. ‘Yes, I am very interested in soft, informal architecture, but the project also needed it’.

Eschewing orthogonal plans helped to get a lot onto the site, which is a stone’s throw from the dense heart of academic Oxford but had a suburban character valued by local planners. They had denied several earlier schemes for the plot, which contained four Arts and Crafts villas and many protected trees, and New College saw its 2015 design competition as the last chance to accommodate all undergraduates in-house. 

A fluid layout amid existing structures

Kohn’s fluid layout, which involved the demolition of one house, another wing and a 1950s school block, brings new structures into touching distance of existing villas in a way that still feels comfortable.

Novelty was also important: for New College, a tradition of architectural innovation is a source of pride. Its Front Quad (1403) was the first purpose-built university quadrangle. In the late 17th century, the college added Oxford’s first three-sided quad, opening onto gardens. It represents, says Kohn, a transition from monastic seclusion and the rigid separation of academic and urban life. 

The brief for the new development stipulated that it must be quad-based but with an even more open, welcoming character. DKA sought to set the tone by softening the interface between architecture and landscape. 

Approaching along Mansfield Road, a deliberately picturesque composition is gradually but readily revealed. The six-storey tower, visible from afar, is a friendly sentinel, faced – like all of the buildings – in richly detailed stone. 

Diagonal joints catch the sun, amplifying the animation of rippling facades whose incurvation presents a slender profile to every viewpoint. Accents of red Cumbrian sandstone sit against beautifully variegated Ancaster limestone, whose flashes of chalky white and pale blue are brighter than Oxford’s mellow Clipsham stone. (With a zigzag pattern like bunting at the eaves of the horseshoe, and the champagne sparkle of mica flakes, the effect is distinctly festive.) 

Most of the accommodation is pulled back from the site boundary, arranged to make a string of south-facing open courts. With a low perimeter fence, rather than central Oxford’s typical high walls, one can look into the interior through a screen of trees. But the best view is from the porter’s lodge. 

This small yet strong-flavoured building holds its place among larger neighbours: a cambered roofline swells to accommodate an arched entrance cutting into the lodge at an angle. Ahead, gardens wend between the rounded ends of buildings layered like theatre flats, drawing the eye into the distance. A relaxed atmosphere induced by the liquid landscape and meandering walls is offset by the precision and poise of taut, decorated stonework and rooflines gathered into tight parabolic pleats. 

Enabling this view from the street was important, helping avoid the impression of secrecy or standoffishness, even though the quads are off limits to the public. ‘A lot of design decisions were as much about the city as about the college,’ says Kohn. Another contribution is made by filigree metal gates designed by the Irish sculptor Eva Rothschild. 

Endangered species bring gargoyle tradition up to date

A second art commission solved a delicate problem. New College is famous for its gargoyles, and insisted on their inclusion. Kohn massaged the brief to give contemporary relevance to a traditional subject. 

A New College biology professor identified 25 endangered animals, which were modelled by artist Monster Chetwynd and carved by stonemason Fergus Wessel. The negotiation reflects the architects’ attitude to the whole project, in which many influential voices had to be heard. 

‘There were constant demands,’ says Kohn. ‘Our role was to be open and find how they might fit’. Perched on the wandering eaves line, above recessed downpipes, the pangolins and golden moles seem right at home.

This stone bestiary might not have been the architects’ choice, but does mesh with a design language that flirts with the fantastical. If Tolkien were still commuting past the site he might see echoes of Bag End in the low-slung lodge, with its giant porthole window. A bridge links the tower to a four-storey block of flats, whose steep roof and arched dormers could have sprung from a fairy tale. 

Subtle surrealism also permeates the interiors. Take the tower, which houses the Gradel Institute of Charity, a research centre funded by New College alumnus Chris Gradel, who was also the project’s main sponsor. 

As planners pushed to make it more of a feature, DKA accentuated its slender proportions with a tiny footprint. Beside a lift and a large, splayed staircase there’s only space for one small study on each level. The floor-to-envelope ratio creates strange tricks of scale like Alice’s experiences in Wonderland – another enchanted Oxford garden – but was the price of consent for the larger scheme. ‘It’s a folly, not an extravagance,’ says Kohn.

Allusions to college history

The tower’s amoebic plan, with three lobes, is an allusion to trefoils found in carved screens in the college chapel. The figure reappears in ventilation grilles, and as one of many eccentric window shapes, along with hexagonal lozenges, circles and keyholes. 

A more high-minded historic reference is made in the basement foyer to the recital hall, below the horseshoe building. A flight of marble steps tucked into a niche marks the site of a Civil War rampart. A Greek inscription offers half of a riddle, whose Latin pair is on a mound in the gardens of New College, which provided a sightline to the fortification. Like the gargoyles, these coded details will give curious students pleasure, but also help convey that this satellite campus is part of the institution. 

Descending to this basement level is thrilling. A winding stair drops through a double-height gallery with kaleidoscopic light bouncing between curved walls. It arrives in the octagonal foyer, whose edges are smoothed by bowed walls and a shallow domed ceiling. Here, it is clearly evident that the buildings’ freeform appearance belies tight, skilful planning.

Right angles are also scarce upstairs in the residential block. Below an oculus, a spiral staircase disgorges onto landings with chamfered corners and oblique views into bright, wavy-walled kitchens. Bedrooms are double-loaded on corridors that arc gently round the horseshoe. One result is more individuality than in the slabs of identikit accommodation found on most campuses, which one can imagine fostering a greater sense of belonging. 

Festive facades – and a sense of permanence

The best rooms are at the top, with mezzanine sleeping platforms below plastered ceilings that swoop like folds of fabric. From a window, we look over more sober recent additions to the city, towards Hawksmoor’s neo-Gothic towers at All Souls. ‘I think of them as a friend to this building,’ says Kohn. ‘They are both fruity and free in their references’. 

In shared kitchens, soffits sag into corners, making a trip to the fridge an enjoyable event. Across the party wall in the prep school, the ceiling of an upper-floor hall plunges in pendulous billows over retractable seating and down towards the stage.

Such gymnastics are challenging to realise. Early on, Kohn envisaged the roof as a catenary vault formed of tiles – but that way, the necessary spaces couldn’t be achieved. Sprayed concrete was tested and rejected as too risky. 

Having explored six construction methods, the contractor proposed a complex glulam frame, fabricated in Switzerland. Wood provided a notable reduction in embodied energy, over which New College engineering professor Barbara Rossi was keeping close watch. 

Externally, the roof is finished in thousands of unique polygonal plates of anodized aluminium, tessellated by a software script. For the most part, they appear smoothly continuous over the surface, but some ragged edges and yawning gaps that have yet to be remedied hint at a considerable struggle.

There are no such flaws in the facades. Each 70mm-thick block was cut to be laid in a diamond bond, and curved on its inside and outside faces. Rationalision during design reduced innumerable radii to four without any apparent loss of fluidity. As we follow each building’s meandering perimeter, every course marries up with millimetre precision. 

The heft of stone and concrete leave no doubt that Gradel Quadrangles could endure far beyond its 100-year design life. The main impression, though, is not of weight but a certain lightness of spirit. For an architect, curves do not make for an easy life, but the evident pleasure taken in design will add to residents’ enjoyment of this rich, beguiling place. 

In numbers 

GIFA 5,639m2
Total project value £72 million
Construction cost £55 million
Cost per m2 £9,670