Magdalen College Library

Typical of Oxford colleges, Magdalen has evolved incrementally around a series of distinctive quadrangles.  Adding to its centuries-old conglomeration of buildings presented the familiar paradox of impinging as lightly as possible on the existing site and structures, while simultaneously reorganising and remodelling them to cater for modern needs. 

Throughout, the idea of subtle transformation underscores the development of the College’s new Longwall Library to create a variety of contemporary study spaces for different ways of working.

The Buckler Building, a former Victorian school, which was itself transformed in the early 1930s to accommodate the College’s original library, was gutted and remodelled, with the addition of a freestanding, three-storey oak structure. A new single-storey wing was also added, containing staff offices and a reading room. 

Previously, there were just 48 study places for Magdalen’s 600 students; now there are 120 in various settings, from an intimate attic floor tucked under the ornate Victorian roof structure to rows of window seats in the new reading room overlooking Longwall Quad.

Wright & Wright also focused on rethinking how external space was used.  Effectively, Longwall Quad has been transformed into an outdoor room.  The central lawn remains, but is now augmented by a sunken, wifi-enabled courtyard, with planted beds and low stone walls for sitting, studying and socialising.  This reworking animates and democratises what was previously inert and proscribed terrain. 

Tactfully subverting the quad’s orthogonal geometry, the courtyard slopes down on a diagonal axis to the library’s main entrance.  Thus the new building is both an end in itself and a component in a larger formal and spatial sequence that activates new ways of experiencing the College.