Project: Oaklands, St Albans
Oaklands College is a Grade II listed post-war former educational campus in the centre of St. Albans. After the college moved to new premises the site was bought by Fairview New Homes for redevelopment into housing. New apartment blocks were planned in a campus arrangement across the site that contained over two hundred mature trees, as if a parkland. A design language was derived from a central group of retained and listed buildings. Adopting the rectilinear building shape and by adding layers in an additive approach, we arrived with a building design that responded to its setting within the listed campus. The buildings use a restrained palette of natural materials – grey terracotta, zinc and cedar – to complement and echo the elegant and glassy listed building group. The scheme is split into two different areas: development of 15 new apartment blocks and the conversion of the existing buildings to provide 329 apartments.
and bathrooms. These were inserted as ‘pods’ which act as a space divider, defining living areas from sleeping, avoiding additional walls.
The former College buildings that form the core of the existing campus consist of seven listed buildings, varying in size and ranging from single to four storeys in height, but unified by a common design philosophy that is seen in their structure and facades.
The surrounding development of new apartment blocks were laid out to continue the Mondrian-like rectilinear planning, but carefully placed to retain the existing mature trees.
Each building has similar structural components that use a kit of parts based on the minimum possible standard steel sections born of post war shortages – channels, angles, tubes, rods and flats – welded together to form columns and beams that are then bolted together to make frames. These frames support thin concrete floor slabs cast over a subtly ribbed former. This method of construction produces not only a very elegant structure but reveals the essence of the buildings themselves. Because of their method of construction on a regular grid of columns and the free façade, these buildings accommodated conversion very well.
The design of the new apartment blocks was based on the need to complement rather than compete – echo, not mimic – the language of the retained and listed buildings at the heart of the development. The new blocks adopt a palette of natural materials that pick up on the grey, ordered and calm expression of the existing – akin to the idea of a Paul Smith suit that makes a contemporary version of a classic. This palette is based on an aluminium framed window system, together with pre-weathered zinc, storey height cladding panels and grey terracotta rainscreen tiles. Parking is provided beneath the new blocks to retain the parkland setting.
The design concept began with a core containing all services including kitchen
PROJECT DETAILS Client: Status:
Fairview New Homes Ltd (succeeded by NK Contract value: Homes PLC) Structural Engineer: Completion 2011 M+E Engineers:
£45,000,000.00 Barton Engineers Hoare Lee