Wolfson Building at Somerville College Oxford, England

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OXFORD

SP5006NE WOODSTOCK ROAD 612/4/10049 (West side) 12-MAR-09 Wolfson Building at Somerville College

GV II

Also Known As: Wolfson Building at Somerville College, WALTON STREET Residential block for students and staff, with ground floor meeting room. 1966-7 by Arup Associates, architects and engineers.

MATERIALS: Precast concrete structure (erected in six weeks) with exposed columns and beams of smooth grey concrete. Between the projecting bay windows there are precast concrete facing panels with a finish of Derbyshire spar aggregate. The ground floor is clad in brick.

EXTERIOR: The upper floors have twenty undergraduate study bedrooms, with three sets for Fellows and two studies for tutors placed in the centre of the block. The building is placed between two earlier brick buildings, through which access is gained to the upper floors, and completes a large quadrangle. There are concrete stairs to either side which are reached via the earlier buildings and from which the service kitchens and bathrooms are first reached. The two exposed facades express the structure, and are dominated by projecting bay windows to each room, precast, with lead weathering and with a precast concrete seat within. These give the building considerable character, particularly as seen from Walton Street to the rear. INTERIOR: Over the beds there are dropped ceilings of British Columbian pine, and there are built-in cupboards for each room; cork tile floors. The hall on the ground floor is panelled in British Columbian pine, and floored with misanda, and has a small stage platform.

HISTORY: The Wolfson Building is the third and smallest of three accommodation blocks built by Arup Associates for Somerville College. Among the first of the firm's commissions following its foundation as a distinct entity within the ambit of Ove Arup and Partners, in 1963, the buildings form part of a wider group of post-war university buildings that explored the possibilities of sophisticated precasting techniques.

This was one of the first attempts to plan against loneliness in university accommodation, with the large window seats and a design aimed at encouraging self expression within the small space. Arup Associates thought through the main elements of a student bedsit with particular care, so that one wall is for work space, one for cupboards, one has the bed and the other the window seat. Arup Associates' university work is always designed with intelligence and an attention to structure that makes the buildings easily interpretable and distinctive; this is an unusually richly appointed example whose elevations are exceptionally assured and well detailed.

Philip Dowson and Peter Foggo, the principal architects of Arup Associates, were unusual in being architects within a firm of engineers, although Foggo had trained initially as an engineer. What they achieved was a synthesis of architecture and engineering, in which quality of finish, services, planning and function were conceived and executed as a whole. This holistic approach was first seen at a group of buildings for Oxford and Cambridge colleges. This group of buildings pioneered the use of storey-height precast concrete cladding, a technique in which Britain was a world leader in the 1960s, and are comparable only with similar buildings by Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis.

SOURCES: Concrete Quarterly. January-March 1968, pp.2-5; Architectural Design, April 1968, pp.164-72; Architect and Building News, 13 February 1969, pp.91-2; Philip Opher, Twentieth Century Oxford Architecture, Oxford, Heritage Tours, 1995, p.14 REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Wolfson Building is designated, for the following principal reasons: Considered the best of three accommodation buildings designed by Arup Associates for Somerville College and built 1966-7. It is technically notable in its use of storey-height precast concrete cl