The Rothermere American Institute
Oxford, England
Kohn Pederson Fox Associates

This steel-and-glass structure defers to its neo-gothic neighbor through linearity, scale, and rhythm

© Peter Cook

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By Suzanne Stephens

The Rothermere American Institute was created as a center for research, teaching, and discussion about American history, politics, and government. Accordingly, the 26,900-square-foot structure, budgeted at $7.3 million, was conceived to provide a reading room with access to book stacks and carrels, as well as a variety of seminar and discussion rooms.

David Leventhal of the London office of KPF placed the rectangular structure catercorner to Mansfield College, the youngest and smallest of Oxford’s 39 colleges. The handsome neo-Gothic buildings, designed in 1887–89 by Basil Champneys, are distinguished by their buttery-tinted Bath-stone walls.

By having the Rothermere center form the north side of a sunken green quadrangle, the architects were able to create a private precinct, with Mansfield College wrapping around the east and south. The siting allowed Rothermere’s reading room, the dominant volume in the building, to look onto the smooth, grassy lawn.

The center is sunk 11 feet below grade, so that its lowest level, which contains seminar rooms, opens out to a terrace edging the lawn, which is depressed 9 feet. By this means, the architects were able to get natural light into all four stories of the building, including the 23-foot-high reading room, while maintaining the eave line of the adjacent Mansfield structures.

Since the major facade’s glass wall faces south, KPF was well aware that heat and glare could be a problem—even in a cool, cloudy climate. The garden elevation features fritted glass louvers over a glass-and-steel curtain wall. Backing up the double layers of glazing are vertical cable-truss wind posts on cantilevered steel floor trays. Behind this greenhouselike assembly the reinforced concrete slab and piers carry the reading stacks, marked by barrel-vaulted concrete ceilings that cantilever over the reading desks on the north side.

For passive cooling, hot air rises through a monitor in the middle of the building and a clerestory along the top of the curtain wall. At night, all the north and south windows open automatically to draw air inside, cooling off the exposed concrete frame and the books. Since the thermal mass keeps room temperatures down during the day, only the garden-level seminar rooms and the rare-book storage need to be air-conditioned.

See the August 2002 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
The Rothermere American Institute

Location:
Oxford, England

Gross square footage:
26,900 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$7.3 million

Client:
Oxford University

Architect:
Kohn Pederson Fox Associates (International) PA,
13 Langley Street,
London, WC2H 9JG
United Kingdom