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Foster + Partners releases Ellison Institute of Technology campus designs in Oxford

2023-10-16T17:09:00-04:00

Foster + Partners has unveiled renderings for a new scientific research and development facility design located in Oxford, UK.

The project to establish a new home for the eight-year-old Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) comprises a 30,000-square-meter (323,000-square-foot) central research laboratory, oncological wellness institute, and restoration of existing buildings. Its creation positions the institute, which also operates out of Los Angeles, for better collaborations with Oxford University and the city’s biotech and technology industries. The EIT says it will also aid with the launch of its new Ellison Scholars program, which was initiated earlier this year.

Image courtesy Foster + Partners

The scope of its design entails connecting the restored single-volume Littlemore House to new pavilions located at the easternmost edge of the site in order to create a larger C-shape footprint surrounding a landscaped courtyard that’s built over a sunken 200-seat auditorium and culminat...

The push for 15-minute cities is now a rallying cry for far-right conspiracists

2023-03-10T18:48:00-05:00

Never before has a mundane theory of urbanism been such a lightning rod for outrage [...] Some online forums have claimed that the 15-minute city represents the first step towards an inevitable Hunger Games society, in which residents will not be allowed to leave their prescribed areas. They see it not as a route to a low-traffic, low-carbon future, but as the beginning of a slippery slope to living in an open-air prison.

The man widely credited with developing the “15-minute city” concept, Colombian-born French academic Carlos Moreno, is the most likely source for paranoia owing to his radical left-wing identity. Though, as Wainwright points out, the idea dates to the 1920s, many conspiracists view its adaptation by cities like Brussels and Paris as tied to the “Trojan horse” that was the pandemic.

Thousands attended a rally against Oxford’s forthcoming plan last month, decrying the city’s embrace of the idea as one entiwned with Stalinism and surveillance culture. Oxford will indeed levy fines on motorists, but the plan’s core, according to Wainwright and Moreno, is more democratic than the extant circulation strategies far-right misinformation campaigns are seeking tacitly to uphold.

"Today 80 percent of urban mobility is forced, because people have to get up early and commute to school, to workplaces that are far from their homes," he told Politico recently. "In a city of proximity in which ser...

AL_A moves forward on world’s first magnetized fusion power plant in UK

2023-01-16T12:06:00-05:00

AL_A has been granted permission to construct the world’s first magnetized fusion power plant. The Culham Science Centre facility, to be located in Oxford, UK, is anchored by a 125-foot-tall cylindrical fusion hall wrapped in a translucent facade.

The scheme was first unveiled in August 2021, commissioned by the Canadian energy company General Fusion in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Unlike traditional nuclear fission stations, which generate energy by splitting atoms, the fusion process involves merging two atoms to generate vast amounts of energy without the highly radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission. Last month, US scientists announced a major breakthrough in the process through a fusion experiment that released more energy than was inputted by the lab’s equipment.

Image credit: AL_A

For AL_A’s plant, the central cylindrical fusion hall is surrounded by a radial arrangement of support systems, all of which are equidistant from the core. In our 20...

Oxford's 'Shark House' owner detests its new landmark designation status

2022-04-01T13:38:00-04:00

The 25-foot tall (7.6 meter) sculpture of a shark crashing through the roof of Magnus Hanson-Heine’s house in rural Oxford, England, is now a protected landmark — and he’s not happy about it.

City Council members in Oxford voted earlier in the month to add the protest artwork to its Heritage Asset Register along with 16 other sites.

Officially named the Headington Shark, the sculpture was installed on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki in 1986 as a powerful anti-war message lobbed against the U.S. government by American ex-pat homeowner Bill Hanson-Heine and local artist John Buckley. Hanson-Heine died in 2019 and apparently passed down his grudge against the planning body, which had for years attempted to effect last night’s removal via a series of orders that were eventually halted by Department of the Environment Minister Michael Heseltine in 1992.

“Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd on the face of it,” Magnus told the AP earlier this week.

Plans for a new humanities center and concert hall at Oxford University have been unveiled

2021-07-09T17:37:00-04:00

Designs for a brand new concert hall at Oxford University have been unveiled, adding an elegant new music venue to the centuries-old campus thanks to a £150 million ($209 million) gift.

The proposed new Stephen A. Schwarzman Center for the Humanities has three distinct performance spaces varying in size and is currently undergoing a second public consultation on the new building’s design before plans are formally submitted to Oxford City Council in the fall.

Images courtesy Oxford University public consultation

Hopkins Architects are behind the scheme for the new concert hall, which will have separate 500-, 250-, and 100-seat spaces and will provide a much-needed upgrade to the existing venues on campus, of which some can recall fondly performances from bygone luminaries such as Handel.

The Center will also serve as the new home for Oxford’s history and humanities faculties. Furthermore, it will feature a dedicated humanities library and new Institute for Ethics in AI, forming an ove...

Owner of famed Oxford shark house has passed

2019-04-03T16:05:00-04:00

Bill Heine, who famously put a 25 foot fiberglass shark by the sculptor John Buckley on top his house, has passed away. A BBC radio broadcaster, Mr. Heine spent a good sum of his time protecting what he saw as a fight for creativity.

Placed without planning permission in 1986, the unusual home addition sparked a 6-years long battle with the Oxford City Council. The shark was finally saved in 1992 by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, whose inspector issued the final ruling in the shark's defense, arguing that "any system of control must make some small place for the dynamic, the unexpected, and the downright quirky."

Bill Heine in April 1987, next to his Oxford home.

During this time, Mr. Heine's shark had become an undeniable part of the local community, and as his daughter describes, "an irreplaceable (and legal) part of the Oxfordshire skyline." Today, the defiant attraction continues to draw thousands of visitors each year.

When diagnosed with terminal...

VeloCity win The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition.

2017-12-12T05:45:00-05:00

Winning “The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition” is the all-women team behind VeloCity. The competition is focused on the Cambridge – Milton Keynes – Oxford arc, which currently is home to leading tech hubs and universities, as well as some 3.3 million people. The area is set to build on its productive history and its skilled workforce to become an area of rich success.

The VeloCity plan is commended for its reimagining of the village model, and its consideration of technology and modern needs in adapting this social structure for the 21st century. Using transport as an impetus for developing the plan, the scheme will benefit from the introduction of a new rail system for the area, which will connect towns and cities. On the smaller scale, the development will put in place a strategical network of pedestrian and cycle routes, which explore and encourage the decreased need for movements by car.

VeloCity clusters around six villages close to a new Oxford-Cambridge...

Wilkinson Eyre-renovated Weston Library at Oxford now reopened

2015-03-26T13:58:00-04:00

Beginning as the New Bodleian Library, the Weston Library at Oxford University was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and constructed in the 1930s. Although construction finished in 1940, wartime purposes delayed the building's official opening in 1946. For the most part, the building remained unaltered other than the addition of the Indian Institute as a south-facing roof extension in 1966-69 by architect Robert Potter and other minor changes in 2010. Then in 2011, London-based Wilkinson Eyre Architects began renovating the Grade II building, which reopened to the public this past weekend.

The £80 million redesign is part of the Bodleian's efforts to better preserve -- and promote -- their vast special collection of books, manuscripts, and other historical objects. In their redesign, Wilkinson Eyre vied to revamp the building's infrastructure while respecting its heritage. As if the collections weren't already enough to gaze in awe at, Wilkinson Eyre also added new reading rooms, r...

Get Lectured: Oxford Brookes University, 2014-2015

2014-09-24T15:30:00-04:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2014

Say hello to another edition of Archinect's Get Lectured! As a refresher, we'll be featuring a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. If you're not doing so already, be sure to keep track of any upcoming lectures you don't want to miss.

Our poster today features the 2014-15 OxArch Lecture Series, "Beyond Architects, Beyond Architecture" from OxArch (The Oxford Architecture Society). OxArch is the student society of the Oxford Brookes University School of Architecture in Oxford, England.

Beyond Architects, Beyond Architecture investigates the ways architectural thinking operates outside the immediate field of designing and making buildings. The series also highlights ways non-architects approach their design processes.

Want to share your school's lecture series? Send us your school's lecture series poster and details to connect@archinect.com.

All lectures are on Tuesday evenings at Oxford Brookes U...