ARCO
Building, Keble College, Oxford, UK
Architect
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Rick Mather
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Date Built
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Opened July 1,
1995
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Location
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Newman Quad
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Description
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The
Keble College website explains that in the
post-war years they had relied on Oxford
Landladies to provide student accommodation
within walking distance of the college. By
the 1980s this avenue started to dry up so the
college decided to build enough accommodation
on-site to make it possible to provide
undergraduates with three years of college
residence instead of the previous two. The
ARCO building in Newman Quad was a part of that
solution. Designed by Rick Mather, it
provides 93 study bedrooms over four
floors. The college describes it as, "...
one of the 'greenest' buildings in Oxford,
using advanced insulation and heat exchange
mechanisms to control the temperature of the
building. The ARCO building also houses
several teaching rooms which open out onto a
terrace and Newman quad. These are
frequently used both for tutorials and, out
of term, as meeting rooms for conferences."
A sundial graces the
façade of the building. "The
elegant, polished stainless steel and
the gnomon’s minimalist shape of a gas
turbine blade reflect Newman Quad’s
clean aesthetic as well as the colours
of the grass and sky. It has Arabic
numerals, used by mathematicians, rather
than traditional Roman ones. Professor
Oldfield was assisted by artist David
Harber's creative and technical skills,
gaining the approval of Rick Mather, the
architect of the ARCO building. The sundial
bears two inscriptions (and you'll have
to look carefully to find them); ‘Fear
no more the heat o' the sun’, taken from
Shakespeare's Cymbeline, honours the
completion of Professor Oldfield’s 41
years at the College; the second is an
academic pun: ‘To good fellowship.’"
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