Our vision

The new Waynflete Quad is a high-quality, truly sustainable development, designed with student and community wellbeing at its heart. It will also provide 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:

Our aim for the new site

We propose to house all undergraduate Freshers on the main College site, so that the year group can more easily forge a strong collective sense of Magdalen identity and belonging from day one.

This will create habits of using facilities within walls such as Hall, the Bar, the JCR, the library and the lawns, and making the most of living in the historic heart of the College.

Our aim is to ensure that the new accommodation we create on the site of the Waynflete Building will be a favoured choice of our senior undergraduates in the room ballot. It will offer comfortable en suite rooms with window seats, magnificent views, and family-style kitchens. Our undergraduates will be living in beautiful buildings, built for the long term, in keeping with the rest of the College.

Design concept

The design replaces 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 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 to the grander College buildings on the other side of Magdalen Bridge.

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, window seats, and en suite shower rooms, providing a secondary purpose as conference facilities outside term time.

The layouts have been designed to give as many student rooms as possible views towards the river, meadows and gardens.

Sustainability

Sustainability is at the heart of the scheme. The project offers the opportunity to develop a best-in-class, low-energy building which fits into the College’s decarbonisation strategy. The project is targeting Passivhaus standards and the BREEAM excellent rating, to create an exemplar sustainable development for Oxford. Redevelopment of the site also offers an opportunity to significantly improve the river ecology and biodiversity in the area, opening up views to the river Cherwell and enhancing the site as a green gateway into Oxford.

The proposed buildings respond to the river and Magdalen bridge much more positively than the existing ones and the way that they ‘townscape building’ steps down towards the retained listed buildings on St Clement’s Street is very effective

Historic England (pre-application advice, 2024)