MBI Al Jaber Foundation Projects:
New building for Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, founded in 1517 is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, home to 360 undergraduate and graduate students.
The College was in need of a building in which it could host lectures and seminars of international standing. Corpus decided in May 2004 to demolish the New Music Room and to replace it with a much larger building, able to seat up to 150 people – the most important building to be constructed on the site in over 300 years. This was reflected in the College’s decision in 2005 to hold an international competition through the RIBA to find an architect capable of designing a modern building that would fill this substantial gap in our provision of facilities to students and academics. Their brief was to select a scheme that both meet the College’s functional needs for the auditorium and which would blend in with Corpus’s unique “wild” garden. The key objective was to design a building whose flexibility would ensure continual use. This would mean that as well as a home for lectures and seminars, it would have to serve as a stage for Corpus’s talented student actors and musicians, both for performance and rehearsals for outside events (such as the production that we take to Edinburgh each year).
Generous Contribution
Recognising that international competitions of this type are expensive to manage, and MBI Al Jaber generously contributed £10,000 towards the cost.
From 105 submissions a short-list of six designs was selected and following presentations from each architect, Rick Mather was chosen by a Jury Panel, chaired by Emeritus Professor Jim Griffiths, working with the assistance of an adviser from the RIBA. Mather has extensive experience of designing successful buildings in Oxford, notable among them the ARCO and Sloane Robinson buildings at Keble. He enjoys a first-class reputation designing masterplans (the current refurbishment of the Ashmolean, for example) and this is reflected in the sympathetic layout he has produced for Corpus. Provisional costings have been undertaken and site-surveys commenced and the architect is now in preliminary discussions with the local authority planning department to ascertain their views on our proposals for this Grade 1* historic site.
The Corpus scheme envisages the construction of a new building on the existing New Music Room site. The current building will be demolished and the ground will be excavated to the level of the Christchurch gardens on the other side of the ancient city wall. The bastion of the city wall will form the outer wall of the auditorium and it’s original features, such as the arrow-slots will help to ensure that much of the “feel” of that part of the College site is retained. A further enhancement will be a wide window at ceiling height that will offer views up to the rose window of Christchurch Cathedral. The northern wall of the building will extend through the existing boundary wall to form an entrance from the Fellows’ Garden (most of which will be retained). This will allow the auditorium to link to the existing Old Lodgings Building and, in particular, the Rainolds Room to bring some of our existing seminar space into its ambit and offering even greater flexibility of use. The scheme also provides for a roof-garden, with views down to the river. This will augment the College’s existing gardens and offer additional space for private study in the warmer months (the garden is already used heavily by students when revising for exams).
Within the auditorium itself there will be provision for up to 150 people seated in theatre style and removable seating will allow us to offer a number of options for smaller groups. Additionally there will be two smaller seminar rooms. Included within the scheme are storage space for equipment and musical instruments and a sophisticated heating and ventilation system to ensure that the building can be used comfortable throughout the year. High quality audio-visual and lighting systems are also specified.
With the help of MBI Al Jaber, Corpus is now able to realise its vision and put in place the final piece of the jig-saw that will complete the college site, five hundred years after the first stone was laid.
