St Catherines College, Podium and All Buildings Upon It Oxford, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

OXFORD MANOR ROAD OXFORDSHIRE SP 50 NW 612/24/10023 St Catherine's College: 'podium' and all buildings upon it. GV I College buildings, raised on a podium, including dining hall, common room blocks; two residential blocks; library; Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre; bell tower; piers and covering to walkways to east and west of library and east and west of hall; bridge adjoining west side of podium; brick walls enclosing canal and patio areas on western edge of podium; brick walls to patio areas to eastern edge of podium; twenty five short stretches of garden wall all running east-west, some incorporating seats; paving to podium surface and steps to east and south sides. 1961-66. Arne Jacobsen. Narrow, buff sandlime bricks laid in a raking stretcher bond; reinforced concrete, flat roof. Concrete paving slabs; bronze vertical sheet cladding to upper floor of library. Almost symmetrical layout with common rooms and attached hall to north of central quad, library and lecture theatres aligned to south of hall; two residential blocks to east and west sides of podium. Hall largely brick clad, with tall aisled interior having cruciform piers. Single storeyed common room block with vertical brick panels between vertical floor to ceiling windows. Library of same height and basic dimensions as hall, but with recessed ground floor with brick cladding and projecting gallery, clad in bronze panels between floor to ceiling glazing. Lecture theatre has matching frame to hall and library but has the same 'footprint' as the library; the upper storey is fully glazed with projecting metal sunscreens. The residential blocks are three storeys with brick to ground floor and fully glazed upper floors; metal framed windows with strong vertical mullions. Four covered walkways with glass and metal roofs resting on brick piers link the buildings around the central quad. There are also low stretches of wall to outer edges of podium, providing enclosure for fellows' rooms. The bell tower, adjacent to the lecture theatre comprises two slabs of concrete, linked at the top, with vertical bronze bell louvres. There are twenty five short stretches of wall, some with seats, in the gardens to the north and the south ends of the podium; all run north-south and providing privacy and visual enclosure for the gardens. The paving of the podium comprises rectangular concrete slabs, set out on an east-west grid, which coincides with the bay module of the buildings and is marked in the paving by rows of narrow corrugated slabs; at intervals planting gaps are left in the paving, an arrangement designed by the architect.

These features form the core of the St Catherine's College layout with the Music Room, Master's House, the wall between these, the bicycle shed and the squash courts (qv).

Architectural Review vol 136, 1964 pp 175-9 and 188-95.

Listing NGR: SP5226706611