Castle Bailey Quad
- location:
- University of Oxford
- client:
- St Peter’s College
- role:
- Architecture
- sector:
- Education
- status:
- Completed 2024
Eco-friendly development to expand student housing options for undergraduates
The prestigious Castle Hill House site is set adjacent to the historic setting of the nearby Oxford Castle. The site boundary itself is formed by Bulwarks Lane to the East (which follows the line of the ditch that surrounded the Castle Mound), the Law Centre to the South, New Road to the West, and Canal House (the Master’s residence) to the North.
St Peter’s College has made strategic property acquisitions to secure the future expansion and growth of the College including the recent freehold acquisition of Castle Hill House on New Road, which was formally the Conservative Club. The College had now redeveloped the Castle Hill House site to provide student accommodation, primarily for its second-year students.
The primary driver for the project was to create a connection between the new development and the existing campus. It achieves this through a new physical ground-level connection across Bulwarks Lane, as well as continuing the quality and character of the current landscaping with the creation of a new quad at the heart of the proposed development.
Design Approach
Design Team
- main contractor:
- Willmott Dixon
- structural engineer:
- Eckersley O’Callaghan
- quantity surveyor:
- Ridge
- fire consultant:
- Semper
- landscape consultant:
- Guillaume Baltz Landscape & Garden Design
- planning consultant:
- JPPC
This new quad breaks the massing of the proposed development, creating two separate buildings housing the 54 study bedrooms. The two residential buildings are connected on the ground floor by a podium building which houses the support functions (including Fellow’s Rooms, an estates workshop and office, as well as cycle facilities and plant spaces) that has a direct connection to Canal House garden and New Road.
Materially the buildings reference the surrounding context: high-quality hand-made bricks in grey and sand colour reflecting the tone and colour of the rusticated base and ashlar stone facings of Canal House, which is accented with patterned cast stone features to building entrances. Terracotta ceramic cladding to the upper storey echoes the tiled roofs of the surrounding buildings.
The existing garden and parking court to the front of Canal House has been re-landscaped to provide a more open and attractive space, adaptive to future parking demands and to facilitate different ways of using the garden. This allows the parking area to connect to the garden for events.
The Site & Sustainability
The Castle Bailey Quad Development is targeting the environmental standard ‘Passivhaus Institute Low Energy Building’. Passivhaus buildings are characterised by especially high levels of indoor comfort with minimum energy consumption. This is achieved by significantly improving the building fabric in terms of thermal insulation and airtightness, thereby minimising energy loss to a level that minimum space heating is required.
The historical context has been a significant design challenge and extensive consultation was undertaken with Oxford City Council and Historic England. While contemporary in approach the design makes references to the existing context in its form, massing, proportions and material tones. This close dialogue has been an integral part of the scheme.
