Actor opposes Brookes (From The Oxford Times)

Mr. Callow is a not a resident in Headington, so what is he so concerned about. I'm a research student at Brookes and I well remember attending a consultation session that Brookes held for research students on the plans for the new extension at the Gipsy Lane campus. Most there were satisfied that the new developments would serve to increase study space for students. As for the architectural merits of the proposed buildings I can't comment as I don't know much about architecture, but the fact is some kind of extension is needed at Headington campus to transform it from a college atmosphere to one of an international research university.

I sometimes think that the opponents of these plans, and those of the Bonn square development plans, are the kind of people who would like us to go back to the 19th century. The architectural features of the proposed designs are modern, and they reflect the times we live in.

Mr Callow said:

"Its unrelenting rectangles will brutally transform an area noted for its gracefulness and its human scale."

One has to ask, in what way are the Lloyd Building, or the former D'Arcy Building or the Gibbs Building "noted for gracefulness"?  If much of the rest of the Gipsy Lane campus is what Mr Callow thinks of as "human scale" - with narrow corridors creating an unpleasant squeeze at busy times, badly evolved open spaces and an arrangement of useable internal spaces that means forcing people to traverse longer distances to find suitable teaching rooms for their class sizes and so on, then as someone who has to use these spaces every day I'll take the inhuman over Mr Callow's "human"!

If the three main four and a half story buildings that exist are part of his idea of a graceful city, he's clearly not noticed us much as he speeds past on his way to the city centre - though I suppose that may be the appeal for him!  Nevertheless it is high time that the institution that is Oxford Brookes University, and not a subsidiary of the "other place", was able to show itself off with the pride that rightly belongs to a university that has risen so fast compared with its peers and not always remain in the shadow of the old place down the hill!

Indeed, though he may well have objected to these too in such strident terms, how do the "old" university's engineering, mathematics, chemistry, social sciences or animal research buildings fit with his view?  No doubt people had similar things to say about Keeble, Nuffield or St Catherines once!

In the context of the entire "master plan" of course, the current planning application is for a building that will eventually enable the university drastically to reduce the built floor space on the Gipsy Lane campus, with a more, not less, open campus, more useful spaces, both for students, staff and the public and leading to less "human traffic" in evidence around the place.  Throughout the masterplan process this part of the site has been earmarked for a landmark building accommodating a large proportion of the needs of the longer term campus renewal and forming the backbone of the new orientation of the campus towards the Headington/London Road rather than the residential side street of Gipsy Lane.

One could try and insist that Brookes spend the sort of money involved in, say, the Islamic Centre on Marston Rd (also grotesquely out of place and character for a suburb in my opinion once, but now exquisitely beautiful even in that setting - and imposed on us, if you will, by Magdalen whom he so priases) and produce something in keeping with the city centre rather than the rather drab London Rd or much of the rest of Oxford's suburban centres, but that would be the incongruous option against the backdrop of the existing campus and border on an even more inappropriate pastiche of Oxford city centre.

We are in Headington, one of whose most architecturally noted buildings is actually a great white sugar cube otherwise known as the JR which is far more dominant, and for miles around too, than Brookes's new buildings will ever be - only a matter of inches higher than what is already onsite.

The concerns of immediate neighbours surely do raise issues of neighbourliness that deserve to be addressed if their fears prove genuine in a planning context.  Though one also has to wonder just how much they and their property values will have benefitted over the sixty years the campus has been earmarked for educational development, rather than as another bit of the Gipsy Lane council estate that could have been there instead had John Henry Brookes not managed to acquire the site so long ago.

But if local campaigners have sought to involve the voices of folk who clearly have not been involved in the long running consultation and whose comments rather prove they haven't understood the development in the context of the eventual redevelopment of a more pleasant modern campus, then I suspect it may end up being an "own goal".  Of course such luminaries can have a voice and use it, but ought really to try to understand the context if they do - and understand also the municipal architectural mediocrity these plans are trying to right at last.

We may not all, even within Brookes, agree with every aspect of every new proposal, but one thing is clear to everyone who has to use the Gipsy Lane site in any context - that its fifties, sixties and seventies architectural "masterpieces" are less and less suited to modern education or community use and we do need to rebuild or risk long term decline in the quality of the area and education on offer - and thence wealth and income to Oxford's economy.  We should work together to resolve the issues - for if such outspokenness as Mr Callow's comments create an entrenched set of positions nobody will get the improvements they seek.

It seems late in the day to object to the principles set out in the masterplan, even if there may be legitimate concerns about some specific neighbourliness aspects of the building proposed.

Declaration of interest:  Yes, I work there, and yes, I live within a couple of hundred yards of most of the main objectors, also on campus, but on the other side of Headington Road, and no, I don't agree with every jot of the new proposal.  But I will not romanticize the current campus as anything other than what was needed in an era noted for for its austere utilitarianism and imagination-free design.  Gipsy Lane campus needs these sort of changes and we need to focus on detail rather than the whole site-wide game plan now.