Why did St Anne’s build the Ruth Deech Building?

• Between 2003-05, the College stood to lose 64 study-bedrooms as the leases on four of its properties expired.
• A further 52 bedrooms were in north Oxford houses - they were valuable assets, but produced little or no income out of term-time.
• Replacing these off-site rooms with new, purpose-built rooms enables the College to house almost all undergraduates on the College site throughout their course.

How do our students benefit?

• The College believes it is vital to offer to all our students good quality, purpose-built accommodation close to the University’s learning facilities (eg, the Bodleian and science area).
• It is also essential that our students are provided with affordable accommodation during term-time because of the high cost of renting private housing in north Oxford.
• In this way, St Anne’s can continue to attract the brightest and best candidates, regardless of means or background.

How does the College benefit?

• The demand for teaching and lecture facilities at St Anne’s was far greater than capacity prior to the Ruth Deech Building’s completion.
• Housing students in purpose-built accommodation on College grounds, rather than in off-site houses, fosters academic and social interaction.
• The income generated by renting out conference facilities in the vacations is vital in supporting the exceptional but expensive tutorial system.

Timeline of the new building:

• October 2002: St Anne’s received planning permission from Oxford City Council to construct a building within the boundaries of the former gardens of 1-10 Bevington Road.  
• June 2003: the College’s Governing Body formally approves the beginning of work on the new building.
• August 2003: construction begins.
• March 2004: official ‘topping-out’ ceremony for the new building.
• December 2004: Governing Body unanimously votes for the new building to be named in honour of St Anne’s former Principal, Ruth Deech (Fraenkel, 1962).
• April 2005: with construction substantially complete, the first conferences are hosted in the Ruth Deech Building.
• June 2005: the Ruth Deech Building is formally opened by the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten, in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, and Ruth Deech.

What does the new building contain?

• 113 en suite study bedrooms;
• 12 kitchenettes (one per nine bedrooms);
• Anew College Lodge;
• The 100-seat Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre;
• 3 large seminar rooms (one named in honour of Marjorie Reeves);
• A large foyer area with supporting facilities (including a kitchen and a 70-seat dining area).

Energy efficiency: the Ruth Deech Building is the second College building to use solar power to provide all hot water. The first was Robert Saunders’ House, in Summertown, which houses 82 post-graduate students. The College supports Oxford City Council’s initiatives to become a Solar City.

What our architects say about the Ruth Deech Building:

From ‘KPF: Vision and Process, Europe, 1990-2002’:

The commission for the Ruth Deech Building, won in competition in spring 2002, to design a new residential building (accommodating 120 students) for St Anne’s College followed on from the success of KPF’s Rothermere Institute. Though a relatively recent foundation, St Anne’s is now one of Oxford’s larger colleges, occupying a site on the edge of the city’s historic core, between Woodstock Road and Banbury Road.

The site for the new development lies between Bevington Road and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s Hartland House, in an area which had inevitably become a cramped backland. The challenge was to create new space and routes, as well as a building, and to make a new communal focus for the college.

The client brief provided for social and some teaching facilities on the lower levels of the new block, with study-bedrooms above.

The straightforwardness of KPF’s architectural strategy derives some inspiration from Arne Jacobsen’s iconic St Catherine’s College, Oxford’s key sixties’ monument, though some of the perceived failings of Jacobsen’s residential blocks are equally addressed; by setting back full height windows behind balconies, for example, residents’ privacy is ensured.

The plan of the building reflects the traditional Oxbridge preference for access from staircases - one for every twenty rooms - rather than corridors.

The potentially awkward relationship between Hartland House and the Bevington Road villas is resolved by cranking the building, thus creating a clear route through from south to north connecting two new courts.

The new building incorporates a porters’ lodge and reception area at its Woodstock Road end, replacing the existing cramped provision in the Gatehouse.

At ground level there is a high degree of transparency, with a split section allowing natural light to penetrate basement spaces, as it is intended that the teaching and social areas will interact with the surrounding courts and gardens.

The cool discipline of the scheme is expressed in a strict palette of materials - only the glazed lift tower is allowed to break the roofline and is, indeed, conceived as an elegant marker for the new development.

The south elevation is long and horizontal, carefully massed to respect the listed Hartland House across the drive. The two buildings combine to establish an entrance court. The building is fractured to identify its entry point, to provide a pathway through the site, and to terminate the view from the entrance gate.

The north elevation is articulated into a series of pavilions responding to the scale of the villas opposite and providing an “enhanced dialogue” across the garden court.