St Edward’s School, Oxford – Delivered on time on budget amidst a worldwide pandemic – The epitome in Architectural Design.

After two years of inspired design, scrupulous planning and ambitious execution, St Edward’s School in Oxford opened its doors as a world class academic facility.

One of England’s most historically significant colleges at the University of Oxford, this brand-new state of the art academic centre of excellence, was designed to embrace new ways of learning, bringing vitality and dynamism to the modern-day learning environment.

This major development is the culmination of a two-year project, consisting of the design and construction of a new build study centre, hall, library, reading room and foyer providing innovative, modern and flexible teaching spaces. The highest in quality architecture and design.

The elliptical shaped Olivier Hall, named after one of St Edward’s most famous alumni, had many challenging design features. With four different curved oak wall panelling designs, over three floor levels with ever changing radii, we worked with our partners and main contractors on site Gilbert-Ash and TSH Architects and used a 3D Laser Point Cloud Survey’s to help design, prefabricate and set out all the varying radius panels off site, and simplify the installation processes onsite.

On the two balcony levels, we incorporated a stainless steel tubular lighting rail system into our radius wall panels. These panels had to be carefully scribed around the rail system neatly.

Under the seating on the balcony level we also constructed a plenum for the heating and cooling of the Hall. The air tightness properties were important to ensure the system worked successfully.

We also designed and constructed 58 pairs of bespoke tri folding wooden shutters for all the windows and 10 sets of acoustic double doors with matching oak panelling to access the main auditorium over the three levels. Providing samples to the School and their design team was important on these items to ensure expectations where met, both in terms of aesthetics and function, prior to going into fabrication and installing the finish products.