- Higher Education
- Higher Education
Oxford Brookes University’s ambitious campus vision involves the closure of its Wheatley Campus and the relocation of the School of Engineering, Computing & Mathematics onto the Headington Campus, collocating with the Schools of Arts & Architecture to bring the Faculty together in a single location. In addition to collocating the Faculty, our key aims for the development included developing a new workshop & teaching building to breathe new life into the Headington Hill site with the purpose of knitting together the University’s Estate at Headington and engaging with the local content to enhance and celebrate the public parkland and the University.
Our key challenges for the project involved continuing the development of Headington Hill to engage within the wider community, and to respect and enhance its parkland, the setting for the listed Headington Hill Hall whilst meeting the critical functional needs of the specialist engineering workshops.
The teaching building features a public-facing element which includes a café, exhibition area, digital theatre, VR cave, office, and a decant/adaptable space. The workshop building provides state of the art facilities for the engineering department, supporting the mechanical engineering courses and the celebrated OBU Racing team. The new teaching building is rearranged around a central spine to connect three floors of accommodation while providing an outward looking social core. This space supports the general student population, with the central space being critical in promoting engagement, collaboration and wellbeing. The digital theatre and media suite contain a public entrance from the foyer to allow access beyond the needs of the teaching program. The design principles behind general teaching, computer rooms and offices have been assessed to provide flexible, adaptable areas that meet the needs of the buildings users now and beyond.
The workshop building design works extremely hard, not only to sit sensitively in its historic context and meet the functional requirements necessary to run the engineering programmes but also to achieve a high level of sustainable design through the enhanced thermal envelope and a breathing façade, which is required to support the engine test cells and wind tunnels housed within.
