Cheng Yu Tung building makes the cover of AJ Specification

Worms eye detail of Cheng Yu Tung Building’s lattice timber soffit and 7m tall tower room window, on the latest magazine cover of AJ Specification - themed around windows and doors.

The new addition is a prominent and unique mixed-use building in central Oxford, which brings together teaching, retail, research, NHS healthcare and student living within a 21st century fourth quad for the Elizabethan college. The scheme is a major addition and new active building in Oxford’s evolving city centre, providing high-quality mixed-use space and turning a previously unsightly ‘back’, to a positive ‘front’. Retail is topped by student residential and communal college space made visible from the public realm to reinforce the building’s presence and diversity of uses.

The scheme is central Oxford’s first new all-electric building, complemented by on-site energy generation for 40 per cent of its needs. Harnessing embodied carbon, the scheme re-uses an existing concrete structure, with the majority of new structure being constructed with carbon-negative cross-laminated timber.

At its centre, a tiered forum provides a gathering space for the college as well as a new facility for interdisciplinary digital research and immersive display and visualisation. Above a new, generous entrance a gatehouse is topped by a new tower room gallery with striking views, at close quarters, across the famous ‘dreaming spires’.

Stuart Cade, director, MICA

Follow the link to read the article at Architects Journal Specification