The University Estate

The buildings which make up the University’s estate are the very dreaming spires symbolic of Oxford. The modern challenge is to preserve the estate’s architectural legacy, while improving the buildings to meet the changing needs of the student and faculty body.

Today, the University Estates Directorate is entering an unprecedented era of building and master-planning initiatives, in order to restore ageing buildings to reach their potential and develop new sites to a similar standard.

The University estate including libraries, museums, teaching spaces, research facilities, administrative buildings and sports facilities – is a vital resource for the entire collegiate University community as well as the public.

Over the last decade, the estate’s expansion has accelerated by around 5 per cent each year, with the vast majority of the new buildings constructed being science-related. Today’s estate includes not only holdings within the city centre, but also development on more distant sites including the Old Road Campus, Iffley Sports Centre, Osney Mead and Begbroke Science Park. Although the University has shown a continuous commitment to developing first and foremost within the centre – from the development of the new Bodleian Library on Broad Street in 1930 to the current redevelopment of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter – the sheer magnitude of research and the subsequent facilities required have made additional expansion necessary.

Although the University Estates Directorate and University administration have successfully guided the renovation and development of these facilities in recent years, until now there has been no single document which analyses the expansion of these institutions in the context of University-wide development.