A new quad for New College, Oxford, home to the first purpose-designed quadrangle built in 1403.

DKA has won an invited competition to design a new quad for New College, Oxford. The project will provide student accommodation and facilities for the adjacent New College School on a site a short walk from the historic centre of the city.

New College was the site of the first planned quad in 1403, a model that has influenced educational institutions globally for over six hundred years. The leafy semi-suburban site offers the opportunity to reimagine the quad as a model for a learning community for the twenty-first century. The proposal combines buildings and landscape into a holistic vision that embeds the College in its context.

Two south-facing garden quads embrace both landscape and sun as they change through the course of the day and seasons. A sweeping path leads through East Quad, an ensemble of new and historic buildings to West Quad, an unexpected space whose gently curving walls gather up the garden, renewing the relationship between institution and nature.