Garden Building: a new home for Wolfson students and fellows

Anyone looking to rent in Oxford knows that there is an acute shortage of suitable accommodation in the city. This is a problem for students and non-students alike.

Wolfson has been lucky enough over the years to provide more accommodation on its single site (the modern estate and its nearby roads) than most graduate Colleges in Oxford. But we are still only able to provide about 40% of our students and research community a room in College in any single year. This is a particular issue for first-year students arriving in Oxford from overseas, who need all the help we can give them in adjusting to the University and the UK, and in creating a community which allows them to make the most of the Oxford experience.

So, the College has for some years been looking at where and how to provide more accommodation. Four years ago, we commissioned architects to give us a long-term estate development plan. The first step of this plan will be to build the Garden Building, with 50 new bedrooms, where the South Car Park now is. Many of you will have seen the designs as they have evolved, in consultation with students and fellows, over the last few years. The building is faithful to the original College architecture; it sits tucked into garden and will be additionally landscaped to ensure greater biodiversity and tree cover. We are not planning to increase student numbers; the net effect will be fifty more people housed in the College, an architecturally outstanding building, and the removal of an unsightly car park.

The Governing Body has now agreed that we should go ahead with this plan, provided that the building is affordable once final costs have been established. Should that be the case, we anticipate starting the work once exams come to a close next summer and hope that the project will take 18 months to finish; the building should open to its first students and fellows in Autumn 2027.