The North Wall, 2006

The North Wall arts centre at St Edward’s School, Oxford, incorporates the conversion of a listed but disused Victorian swimming pool and a new studio and foyer building. The swimming pool and outbuildings provided the enclosure for a new timber-framed 250 seat flexible auditorium and support spaces, while the remaining accommodation is housed in a series of contemporary ‘barns’ arranged along the existing wall. A foyer and gallery space in the centre of the linear building allows direct access both from the town and school sides, reflecting the art centre’s dual role as a school facility and public building. The interior is made of simple, hard-wearing materials: polished concrete, stained plywood panels and natural plywood slats. High levels of insulation, combined with carefully sized windows, help to minimise the energy use in heating and ventilating the spaces. Externally, the walls and roof of the building are clad in unseasoned English oak shakes (hand-split tiles) and slender green oak slats (both carbon neutral materials), designed to bend and twist into organic, patinated surfaces that will vary in colour and texture according to orientation and exposure. The combination of vernacular forms, large frameless windows and a traditional cladding material give the building a rich, abstract quality, appearing both familiar and strange in the sensitive historic setting of the school and its immediate surroundings.