Beecroft Building, Oxford, UK

Architect	Hawkins\Brown
Date Built	Officially opened September 2018
Location	Parks Road
Description
An article on the http://www.ox.ac.uk/news website on September 17, 2018, under the headline "New £50m physics building opened by Sir Tim Berners-Lee", reported that, "... The University of Oxford has marked the opening of the Beecroft Building, a new 8,950sqm building for experimental and theoretical physics. World wide web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee and donor Adrian Beecroft joined the Chancellor, Lord Patten of Barnes, and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, to officially open the new state-of-the-art facility located in Oxford University’s science area in Parks Road. The Beecroft Building sits above the deepest basement in Oxford: a 16-metre-deep complex of high-specification laboratories intended to house extremely environmentally sensitive atomic-level experiments that will advance the University’s research into areas such as quantum science and technology, and probe the fundamental laws of nature. The new laboratories are among the very best globally. They can maintain temperature to within a tenth of a degree, and reduce the amount of vibration down to the width of a few atoms." The architects explain that, "... The building form and facade were carefully designed in response to surrounding buildings. It is clad in a combination of bronze, glass and expanded copper mesh insert panels with a grid of naturally weathering bronze fins. The rhythm, vertical emphasis and colour respond to the upright gothic style of Keble College. Large picture windows frame views into and out of the internal collaboration spaces, creating visual connections between activities within the building and its context. .... The Beecroft Building is designed to facilitate extremely sensitive experiments that will advance the University’s research into areas such as quantum science and technology, and the fundamental laws of nature. The environmental and anti-vibration performance of the high specification laboratories is amongst the very best globally." ********************************** Images taken during the construction phase.