The Innovation Building is our sixth project for the University of Oxford, and our fifth on the Old Road Campus. The aim for the university and the companies housed there was to enable collaboration between commercial and academic researchers.
The building is located at the main entrance to the campus and also provides a centralised car park for the estate and a distribution centre for deliveries. Together, these facilities help to reduce through-traffic and create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.
The cladding design – inspired by the surrounding natural landscape – expresses and unifies these different uses. Aluminium fins, some twisting, some flat, clad the car park. We used a digital script to create a pattern which, from afar, creates the appearance of tree silhou