Section 8: Looking Forwards

8

Looking Forwards

The Development at Norham Gardens by Charlotte Sweeney

An impression of the new view from the rear of 19 Norham Gardens rear gardens, and through the site line form the East to the West of the plot. Visualisation by Picture Plane.

Offering the optimum potential for expansion, Norham Gardens was chosen as the site for new student accommodation. It is an important project for the College as it brings together several strategic aims: being able to house all its undergraduates, moving towards becoming a net zero energy institution, improving access and diversity, and catalysing a creative and inclusive College culture by: • Establishing a sense of place • Providing an exemplar of biodiversity and sustainability • Relating inside with outside, with good views of and relationship with nature • Creating shared spaces for the community in common rooms and outdoor enclaves, as well as in students’ personal kitchen diners • Making a feature of work and achievement by members of College: celebrating research and student art in the entrance and other communal areas • Ensuring there are spaces which can be organised and managed for informal cross discipline interaction and for events which need not be alcohol dependent • Defining and accommodating different cohorts • Being intimate and human scaled, with clusters of no more than seven rooms with an individual kitchen/dining room • Taking care with the design of each bedroom, to ensure good aspects; they can also be personalised with the bed arranged in different places. All new build rooms will have an en suite bathroom • Providing a safe, secure and accessible environment for Hall students

Norham Gardens forms part of the Norham Manor Estate, which was originally laid out in 1860 by William Wilkinson for St John’s College as the second of two major estates built on college land in north Oxford. Stringent building regulations ensured high standards of workmanship and sanitation, while prohibiting roughcast or cemented facades and high boundary walls between plots. The outcome is a unified and characterful array of handsome villas in the Gothic or Italianate style, three to four storeys high, set in large, mature gardens. Solidly built in mustard or red brick set off by stone dressings, they give the area its prevailing air of leafy sobriety and propriety. The social strata of Victorian domestic life is reflected in a vertical hierarchy of rooms, from larger ‘piano nobile’ drawing rooms to smaller attic spaces with dormer windows. Other features include pitched roofs, gables, barge boards, bay windows and chimneys. Constructed between 1871 and 1876, 17 Norham Gardens was designed by Frederick Codd, a pupil of Wilkinson. In 1888 the site was acquired by St Hugh’s Hall to house female scholars, in particular the daughters of the clergy. In 1894, St Hugh’s extended the main house, eventually moving out in 1919. The new occupants were St Stephen’s House, a theological college, and it is likely that the single storey chapel was added to the south-west end around this time. During the 1960s, a modern, four storey extension was built at the north-east end. St Stephen’s House moved out in 1980, when St Edmund Hall acquired the site. Currently, 47 postgraduate students can be housed at Norham Gardens, but conditions are not ideal, with one bathroom for every three to four study bedrooms. The site also contains the College gym, a common room with a pool table and several kitchens. Over time, the various piecemeal extensions have contrived to undermine the character of the original Victorian architecture, yet it remains clearly discernible, and the site has the potential to become a more pleasant student enclave and provide St Edmund Hall with an increase in bedroom capacity while improving the overall quality of accommodation.

Below: Common areas. Visualisation by Wright & Wright Architects.

Visualisation by Wright & Wright Architects

1. Reinstate the original Victorian villa at 17 Norham Gardens, with the two extensions 2. Create high buildings onto the street, with a central building stepped back from the road, so the new buildings are of similar scale to the surrounding Victorian villas 3. Add low buildings in the rear gardens, akin to the MCR 4. Frame long views through from Norham Gardens between the buildings, to the trees in the park 5. Form a lower ground level, arranged around a cloister garden 6. Separate the cohorts into distinct, individual buildings 7. Have clusters of no more than seven

rooms sharing kitchen and dining room as individual flats 8. Provide a staffed Lodge front entrance, with landscaped front gardens and cycle parking 9. Incorporate communal space that reflects the research and creativity of College members, and promotes social interaction and wellbeing 10.Address the scale, form and mass of the new building adjacent to the Department of Education at 15 Norham Gardens 11.Create an exemplary, climate change resistant and biodiverse garden for the future 12.Build a net zero carbon, Passivhaus, low maintenance development

A typical student bedroom and an example of a kitchen. Visualisation by Wright & Wright Architects

A Holistic Environmental Concept for Norham Gardens

This project will help us towards achieving net zero emissions and becoming one of the greenest and most environmentally sustainable colleges in Oxford. The proposals will be designed to meet Passivhaus standards, which will ensure that the airtightness and thermal performance of the building envelope is significantly better than current best practice, therefore greatly reducing the energy required to operate our new buildings. In addition, responding to the climate and biodiversity crises, the proposed design creates a landscape that is resilient and supports change, sustaining and encouraging a rich biodiversity throughout its operational life. Charlotte Sweeney, Domestic Bursar

A New Look for Teddy Hall’s Logo by Claire Parfitt

Since the Hall launched its ambitious 10-year strategy in October 2019, I have been reviewing all of the College’s external and internal communications to ensure that we consistently reflect our ambition to become a greener, more diverse and accessible home for world leading research and teaching. As part of this, it became clear that the Hall’s visual identity was inconsistent, especially in print formats. Without an update since 2012, the look was in need of a refresh. To make sure we have a brand fit for the 2020s, we worked with a designer to develop a new modernised logo, colour palette and typeface (text) better suited to digital formats. Thanks to that work, the College is now in a stronger position to appeal to a new generation of potential applicants whilst still maintaining a strong connection to the Hall’s history. Having started the project in earnest in November 2020, we entered an extensive consultation process with the Principal, SCR, MCR, JCR and staff to develop a new logo and brand guidelines which everyone could support and use. The new materials have brought greater consistency in terms of the design and colours used throughout College and in publications for everyone in our community, be they potential applicants, Aularians or friends of the Hall. Among the most notable improvements to the Hall’s visual identity has been removing the black outline and banner from the logo to produce a cleaner look and more readable text. We also reproportioned the cross fleury to make it less stretched, while the chough is now closer to a real-life chough in appearance. All in all, that means a more elegant and more modern shield. One of the most enjoyable parts of the project was diving into the history of the shield and the logo. The shield and the typeface have always evolved with the times, with each reflecting something about the Hall and its history at that particular time. The cross has even alternated between a patonce and fleury, while the Cornish chough has gone through several different iterations over the years. However, the cross, choughs and yellow and red have remained constant features giving our shield its undeniable distinctiveness. In 2012, the Hall created its first brand guidelines including the logo with the banner you see on this page. Eight years later, I am delighted to present the latest update to better reflect the Hall and its unique place in the world today.

St Edmund of Abingdon’s Coat of Arms, from which the Hall’s shield originated, as shown in the Hall’s Benefactors Book

Over the course of the coming months, my colleagues and I will update all of our print and digital materials with the new branding. The Hall website has been refreshed and we are working on updating the designs of our print materials, putting the Teddy Hall colours of red and yellow at the heart of all our communications. We are also looking to integrate our subbrands into this new identity to complete the project as the Hall continues to look forward. Claire Parfitt, Communications Manager