Thumbs downs for Blavatnik

At a meeting at St Barnabas Church on 27 March, organized by the Jericho Community Association, local residents gave a generally unfavourable response to the plans for a new building for the Blavatnik School of Government. This would be next to Freuds in Walton Street, on the south-west corner of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. Swiss architects, Herzog & de Meuron, explained their reasoning for the roughly circular building, which is built up as a stack of layers progressively set back from the street with the library at the top. They went to great pains to show how the building would look from afar – from Boars Hill, for example, and Port Meadow – saying that they actually wanted it to be visible on the Oxford skyline. Generally residents were unimpressed. The questioning started with a challenge to the architects to say which presentation was correct – the street perspective artist’s impressions or the model of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter which appeared to show the building much taller. They claimed both were correct. To the untrained eye (or trained eye in the case of the questioner) the model did seem to show the building as much more substantial. It will be 22 metres high, around twice as high as the adjacent Freud’s café – whose owner David Freud voiced strong objections. There was not much support voiced at the meeting for the design, which was compared by one person to a ‘glass marshmallow’ (and by another to something altogether less flattering). And most of those making comments did not feel it sufficiently respected the local surroundings. One suggested that the shape of the library might echo the octagon of the Observatory tower. However, the discussions among residents before and after the meeting also indicated some support for the modern design, if not for the height. The building’s current height does breach the City Council’s guidelines which say that no building within a 1,200 metre radius of Carfax should be higher than 18.2 metres. The architects claim that the ‘iconic’ nature of the building should permit an exception in this case. The planning application has now been submitted and is likely to be considered by the West Area Planning Committee on May 8. The documents related to this application may be viewed at the City City Council Planning site using the planning reference 13/00119/FUL.