Riverside Project, Magdalen College
Oxford, United Kingdom 2022–present
Client: Magdalen College Grade I listed
Magdalen College is famous for its medieval core which includes some of the most beautiful and spacious quads in Oxford. The college is unusual because it sits outside the original city walls on a site arrayed along the banks of the river Cherwell, the age of its buildings and its riverside setting giving it a more bucolic quality than Oxford’s later, more urban, colleges.
Caruso St John were appointed via a competitive workshop process, during which the architects worked with the client to develop the brief for the Riverside Project. The project is focused on enhancing the social heart of the college — a series of rooms on the east side of the estate clustered around the Old Kitchen Bar and the river terrace overlooking the Cherwell. The scheme will increase social and teaching space, improve access, conserve existing listed fabric, and reduce energy loss as part of an estate-wide programme of decarbonization.
The new multi-purpose Garden Room is central to the project. During the day, the room is a place for coffee and studying in a casual environment. In the evening, the space can be used for performance, dances, receptions, or talks. The new building is built in limestone, with fine trabeated details – pilasters, arches, and string courses – and a large stone slate roof. The end elevation provides a face to the new garden terrace and the lawn beyond, adopting a slightly asymmetric composition connected to the loose, plural, and adaptive Gothic tradition of the medieval parts of the college.




Drawings

Site plan

Ground floor plan

Cross sections

Garden room elevations

Riverside elevations

Garden room section
Model



Credits
Location
Oxford, United Kingdom
Date
2022–present
Client
Magdalen College
Heritage
Grade I listed
Sustainability
BREEAM Outstanding
Area
1,200 m²
Caruso St John Architects
Adam Caruso, Peter St John, Rod Heyes
Project architects
Catija Christensson (2022–2023), Vassia Chatzikonstantinou (2023–present)
Project team
Eleanor Catlin, James Flaus, David Lawrence, Carlos Peters, Benjamin Wells, Tom Whittaker
Structural engineer
Alan Baxter
Services engineer
Ritchie + Daffin
Building Physics
NDM Heath
Cost consultant
Gardiner and Theobold
Heritage Consultant
Donald Insall Associates
Planning consultant
Carter Jonas
Acoustics
Sandy Brown
Access consultant
Access=Design
Fire engineering
Trigon Fire Safety Ltd
Sustainability and BREEAM
Twin and Earth
Ecology
Applied Ecology
Arboriculturalist
Venners Arboriculture
Approved Inspector
Socotec
Archaeology
Pre-construct Archaeology
Logistics consultant
Blue Sky Building
Catering Consultant
Humble Arnold Associates
Visualisations
Nora Walter
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