For us, good architecture plays a variety of experiences against underlying order so as to produce harmony. The new library is based upon a logical latticework of interrelated elements. A regular grid of brick chimneys supports the floors and book stacks and carries warm air up to ventilate the building. Between each set of four chimneys, there is a roof lantern bringing light down into the spaces below: air rising and light falling.

This regular array produces a natural hierarchy with narrow zones for circulation and wide zones for reading rooms. The delineation of load-bearing brick vertical structure, supporting spanning engineered timber horizontal structure is used to reinforce the organizational scheme. This creates an underlying pattern of warp and weft that we hope can be understood intuitively by people using the building.

The materiality and form of the new library are derived both from its context and from the College’s brief to make a highly durable and sustainable building. The older college buildings are of load-bearing brick, with timber floors and gabled pitched roof structures. Brick chimneys animate the skyline and stone tracery picks out the fenestration. We tried to make the new building from this set of architectural elements. We used timber instead of stone for our window tracery, which will weather over time to become a silvery grey like the stone.

We worked carefully with our builders to find a variety of bricks that would match the tapestry-like quality of the older College buildings. At the same time, this is a modern building that employs innovative passive ventilation strategies to minimize energy in use and engineered timber structure to reduce carbon embodied in its construction.

Text provided by the architect.

Half a century later, Cowan Court turns the picturesque Brutalism of the original college towards the 21st century. Sustainability, accessibility, landscape and a new approach to communal and private space transform the raw sensuality of the brick and board marked concrete courts of the original college into an innovative, contemporary, low-energy timber building. The staircase that traditionally serves and defines a vertical community of rooms becomes a cloister, bringing circulation towards social spaces positioned around enclosed landscaped woodland at the centre of the building. The rooms served by the central cloister are all fully accessible and frame views outwards, towards Churchill’s extensive open playing fields and meadows.

Three storeys, square court, the same footprint as the existing courts: Cowan Court evolves many features of the original college buildings. The untreated reclaimed oak cladding echoes the textured board marked concrete and the colour of brick in the original college. New pale oak adds refinement in the lining to the cloister and triple glazed windows. The bay windows, characteristic of original student rooms, reappear as deep window seats within the thick, insulated walls of the energy efficient new building. In summer, the densely planted birch forest within the court shades an informal garden for students to meet and study, which turns to orange in autumn and opens to the sky in winter.

The materiality of Cowan Court forms part of an ambitious environmental strategy; passive ventilation, triple glazing and super insulation reduces the amount of energy consumed in construction and in use. Solar electricity, solar water heating and rainwater collection reduce the energy requirements yet further.

6a won an international competition to design this first new court in the college in 2008. The existing buildings were designed by Sheppard Robson following one of the most important architectural competitions of the post-war period. Today, the listed college is one of the finest examples of English Brutalism in the UK. Cowan Court responds to the original in a contemporary timber construction. In three overhanging floors, the jettying timber cuts recall the concrete bands across the facades of the existing courts. Each of the facades is curved like the entasis of a classical column, and the square windows of the student rooms spiral up and across, chasing around corners in playful misalignment.

Text provided by the architect.