Work starts on futuristic Oxford University building

11:10am Thursday 31st January 2013 in News

An artist's impression of the suspended bridge An artist's impression of the suspended bridge

HER form-bending visions have made the Baghdad-born architect Dame Zaha Hadid the world’s most famous woman architect.

And yesterday she was in Oxford for the ground-breaking ceremony marking the start of work on a “suspended bridge” she is creating at St Antony’s College, Woodstock Road, made possible by an £11m donation.

The three-storey building will form a bridge between numbers 66 and 68 Woodstock Road, providing a new 125-seat lecture theatre, along with a new library, for the college’s Middle East Centre.

Dame Zaha is best known in the UK for designing the Aquatics Centre at the London Olympic Games.

Comments(7)

Grunden Skip says...
1:23pm Thu 31 Jan 13

That is totally out of character with the two adjacent buildings, how did that get past the planning process? Oh I forgot, it is the University.

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dant40 says...
8:19pm Thu 31 Jan 13

£11m turns up. So why not get a English architect. It is oxford!! or she comes in the package deal. What a waste of money.

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colin777 says...
11:21pm Thu 31 Jan 13

what a load of crap........take it back to Bagdad when you leave please.

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Paul0 says...
12:33pm Fri 1 Feb 13

There is no apparent link between this building's form and its function. How could you possibly tell that it includes a library and a lecture theatre? How do you access it? Why was this form chosen? It looks utterly indifferent to human users. What this is, I suspect, is "signature" architecture, an easily-recognised, landmark building that's raises the profile of the architect and that of the institution that commissioned it, and that is very exciting, but completely disregards its context.

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Dr S Brule says...
3:39pm Fri 1 Feb 13

I have little to comment on the aesthetics of the building (other then it reminds me of the spaceship in Flight of the Navigator) however I take issue with dant40 and colin777. The architect in question is a british iraqi, her firm is based in London and she has a CBE. Given that this is for the Middle East Centre this seems a completely appropriate choice.

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Grunden Skip says...
5:29am Sat 2 Feb 13

Dr S Brule wrote:
I have little to comment on the aesthetics of the building (other then it reminds me of the spaceship in Flight of the Navigator) however I take issue with dant40 and colin777. The architect in question is a british iraqi, her firm is based in London and she has a CBE. Given that this is for the Middle East Centre this seems a completely appropriate choice.
So why would a Brit/Iraqi be the correct choice to design a spaceship in between to old English buildings Dr? Surely an architect with classic English training would have been better. Her design has nothing to do with The Middle East, unless you consider the monstrosity that is Dubai to be classic Middle East Architecture.

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Grunden Skip says...
7:26pm Sun 3 Feb 13

Dr S Brule wrote:
I have little to comment on the aesthetics of the building (other then it reminds me of the spaceship in Flight of the Navigator) however I take issue with dant40 and colin777. The architect in question is a british iraqi, her firm is based in London and she has a CBE. Given that this is for the Middle East Centre this seems a completely appropriate choice.
By the way I just thought of something that made me chuckle. You mention the CBE as if it has some relevance to her appointment to design this thing. Well Jimmy Savile, was a Knight of The Realm, so by your standards he should have been head of The NSPCC. :-{

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