The product of a controversial £150 million donation, the new Schwarzman building is a dominating new presence for the city and university, built within the architectural patchwork of the Radcliffe Observatory, Somerville College, and the Blavatnik School of Government. But whilst the Blavatnik takes its cue from the sleek, all-glass modernism of a Canary Wharf skyscraper, the behemothic Schwarzman, designed by Hopkins’ Architects, offers an entirely different impression.
Professor William Whyte, who acted as chair of the project board, told Cherwell that the brief for the building’s design was to create “a contemporary version of a traditional Oxford building” – a description as vague as it is evocative. And yet it describes precisely the impression one receives of the Schwarzman upon first viewing: a building which is unashamedly modern, and yet engaged in a subtle dialogue with the storied architecture of Oxford.
Approaching from the North, the principal façade combines the familiarity of Oxford’s warm, honey-coloured stone with vast windows, glazed with a single, uninterrupted pane. The composition centres on an outwardly projecting pavilion, supported by a sleek arcade of eight bays, which contains the compact, new Bodleian Humanities Library.
This polished yet sober classical reference successfully negotiates the balance between tradition and modernity in a synthesis which is somewhat reminiscent of interwar stripped classicism. Whilst this stylistic parity may on the one hand recall the architectural language of continental fascism, Professor Whyte countered that the building was as much in dialogue with the work of Lutyens, as with the Palazzo del Civiltà Italiana. This classicism in geometry and form lends the building something of a “civic” feel, to use Whyte’s phrase, an impression important for a building intended from the outset as a public, as well as an academic, space.
The Schwarzman avoids, however, the charge of inauthentic historicism. It does not strive for the elegance of its neighbouring Radcliffe Observatory, completed in 1794 by the neoclassical architect James Wyatt. Instead, the Centre gives the impression of muscularity, a solidity of presence – largely a product of the building’s adherence to the passivhaus standard of sustainability. The symmetrical groupings of windows in the central pavilion give way to a playfully disordered composition of openings, which Whyte comments drew inspiration from the arrangement of windows at New College.
Curiously, the entrance pavilion is a storey shorter than the rest of the building, undermining its massive presence. It gives the impression of a building embarrassed by its own bulk, stooping down at the centre to bashfully meet the Observatory. The landscaping between the two buildings manages this awkwardness with a little more flair. The circular patterns of planting and lawn create a charming garden which flows naturally between the two buildings, easing the transition through the newly created plaza.
Moving inside the building, the sleek and crisp feel continues. The building’s interior is unashamedly modern, even corporate, although the use of wood offers a humanising touch. The main feature of the interior is the impressive glass-domed atrium, which rises through the full height of the building, flooding its depths with light. The wooden slats which crisscross the dome burst outwards like a star, and in their geometry recall the flavour of Islamic architecture.
The atrium itself, with the off-shooting faculty offices whose names are displayed over their glass doors, recalls the labels in the quad of the Old Bodleian Library, and Whyte also notes the proportional similarity to the interior of the Radcliffe Camera. There is clearly an intent in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter to create a coherent assemblage of university buildings mirroring the traditional University centrepiece of the Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian and Sheldonian, although an evaluation of the success of this endeavour must await the redevelopment of the as yet empty plot adjacent to the Schwarzman.
The Schwarzman Centre, then, makes a fitting addition to an ancient scholastic heritage, sensitively tying in with the Observatory without alienating the post-modern buildings that surround it through an excess of ornament: a cautious and relatively successful approach to adding to Oxford’s built environment.
