Ruskin Lane Building

Two new student accommodation blocks, with Ruskin Lane incorporating a warden’s flat, teaching, conference and catering spaces (ADP Architecture, 2006 and 2007)

These two new blocks made a substantial addition to Worcester’s accommodation for undergraduate students on its site (c. 150 rooms), and were built to a standard suitable for conferences. A wider programme involved the conversion, extension and upgrading of older buildings to provide more accommodation of a similar standard. ADP designed the new blocks mainly in a pale-coloured brick with pitched roofs and metal cladding details. The architecture is unexceptional but fits well into this corner of the College’s extensive site, adjacent to Worcester Place, which also boasts the first building in Oxford by MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (the acclaimed Sainsbury Building, 1984). New student accommodation buildings were a major theme of the 1990s, when some 20 colleges built them, on-site where possible and off-site where not, and this has continued into the new century with a growing emphasis on high quality rooms designed to appeal to the conference market, a vital source of income for many colleges.

Walton Street, Oxford OX1 2HB (partly visible from Worcester Place)

Earl Building