The proposed scheme aims to deliver a high-quality, truly sustainable development, designed with student and community wellbeing at its heart, as well as a long-overdue enhancement of this important gateway site for Oxford.
The new development has been designed by Stanton Williams Architects, Stirling prize winners who have worked with Rhodes House and a number of colleges across Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as the Royal Opera House in London. They have extensive experience in working with heritage buildings in historic and sensitive sites.
The new Waynflete will:
- Provide outstanding en-suite student accommodation centred around 11 individual households with their own kitchen/social space
- Optimise the riverside setting with terraces and gardens
- Develop a greater sense of community with more shared social spaces
- Create a new heritage for the College by delivering the highest-quality architecture, built to last
- Open out and connect to the main College site
- Improve the public gateway to Oxford
- Improve accessibility
- Deliver best-in-class levels of sustainability
- Bring first-year undergraduates into the heart of the College
- Provide first-class conference facilities
- Provide a flexible events space for College and community use
Design concept
The design replaces the monolithic structure of the current Waynflete building with a series of connected buildings of differing heights to maximise the light, green space and river views from the bedrooms. Pulling the new development back from the river creates an opportunity for a new riverside garden, enhancing biodiversity. Opening up this part of the site will enhance views of the River Cherwell and the green gateway into Oxford from Magdalen Bridge.
The new development will retain retail space on The Plain, and incorporate a flexible events space, opening onto the river terrace
The frontage on the Plain, which acts as a gateway to the central historic and collegiate core of Oxford, is designed to create a sympathetic transition from the domestic, smaller scale of the St Clement’s listed buildings (via the new Townscape Buildings) to the grander College buildings on the other side of Magdalen Bridge (via the new Gateway Buildings).
The new development will retain retail space on The Plain, and incorporate a flexible events space, opening onto the river terrace, and making the most of the close proximity to Magdalen Bridge and the meadows.
Social living spaces
Student rooms will be accessed from shared staircases off the entrance quadrangle, and arranged in clusters with a communal kitchen large enough to allow for social interaction between students. The layouts have been designed to give as many student rooms as possible views towards the river, meadows and gardens. Bedrooms will have small double beds and en suite shower rooms, providing a secondary purpose as conference facilities outside term time.
The new development will contain:
- 96 student bedrooms, including 21 refurbished rooms in the adjacent St Clement’s buildings
- 11 shared kitchens
- 3 flats
- a 90m2 multi-purpose/events space