Media

Work starts on £11m Zaha Hadid building for the Middle East Centre in Oxford

30 January 2013

One of the world’s most celebrated architects, Dame Zaha Hadid, will be in Oxford to mark the start of work on a building she has designed for the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College.

Zaha Hadid, who was recently made a dame for her services to architecture, is best known in the UK for her design of the Aquatics Centre for the London Olympic Games.  Dubbed ‘The Softbridge’ because of its design, the new construction will be known on completion as The Investcorp Building. The project is expected to be finished by the summer of 2014.

The building has been made possible through a generous donation of £11 million funded by the international alternative asset management firm, Investcorp. The guest of honour at today’s ground-breaking ceremony will be Investcorp’s Executive Chairman and CEO, Mr Nemir Kirdar.

The three-storey Softbridge building will form a suspended ‘bridge’ between numbers 66 and 68 Woodstock Road and provides 1,200 square metres of floor-space.   Its new lecture theatre, replacing the cramped rooms where public seminars are currently held, offers 125 seats and disabled access.  The building will also house a new library and purpose-built archive facility, doubling the amount of space currently available.

Mr Nemir Kirdar said: ‘Investcorp was founded to create a bridge between investors in the Gulf States and investment opportunities in Europe and the US. I am delighted that Investcorp’s funding now makes possible this magnificent new centre – a building dedicated to deeper cross-cultural understanding.  Its bridge design beautifully encapsulates the links that we hope the Centre will forge between the Middle East and the West.’   

Dame Zaha Hadid said: ‘The floating nature of the ‘bridge’ is emphasised via its stainless steel cladding which has a light and ephemeral appearance; its surface echoing the existing context of listed buildings, trees and ever-changing light conditions.’

Founded in 1957, the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College serves as the University of Oxford’s facility for research and teaching on the Arab world, Iran, Israel and Turkey from the 19th century to the present day. Since 1978, the Centre has been housed at 68 Woodstock Road (the former rectory of the Church of St Philip and St James, built in 1887). The Centre comprises a major research library, based in 68 Woodstock Road, and an internationally recognised archive of private papers and historic photographs of the Middle East, situated in the basement of 66 Woodstock Road.

On the completion of the Softbridge Building, the Middle East Centre Library and the archive will move into purpose-built facilities, providing state-of-the-art resources to conserve and manage the collections. This will make space available in the existing buildings for 14 academic offices and a seminar room. The need for more teaching space has grown more acute as student numbers have expanded dramatically in recent years, with over 30 Masters students and more than 40 doctoral candidates now studying at the centre.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Professor Andrew Hamilton, said: ‘We are hugely grateful to Investcorp for this most generous donation. It enables a building designed by one of the world’s most exciting architects to be created in Oxford.

‘We hope that members of the public, as well as University staff and students, will enjoy the new building’s stunning, state-of-the-art lecture theatre and the new dedicated spaces for displays of Middle Eastern art which will also be open to the public.’

Dr Eugene Rogan, a Fellow of the Middle East Centre, has worked with Zaha Hadid Architects to bring this project to fruition. He said: ‘Zaha Hadid was the ideal choice for this project as she is one of Britain’s greatest architects with her roots firmly in the Middle East. That nicely paralleled our vision of Oxford’s Middle East Centre as a British centre of excellence with deep roots in the region. With this new building, the Middle East Centre enters a new era as one of the world’s finest research facilities on this area of crucial public interest.’

For more information please contact to the University of Oxford Press Office on +44 (0)1865 280534 or email: press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Notes for Editors:

  • Images of the new building are available to download Softbridge Building_Oxford
  • Please credit photographs to Zaha Hadid Architects.
  • The Middle East Centre
    The Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College is the centre for the interdisciplinary study of the modern Middle East at the University of Oxford. Centre Fellows teach and conduct research in the humanities and social sciences with direct reference to the Arab world, Iran, Israel and Turkey and particular emphasis on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. For more information, go to http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/mec/index.html.
  • The Campaign for the University of Oxford
    In 2008, the University of Oxford officially launched the biggest fundraising campaign among European universities to raise a minimum of £1.25 billion for the collegiate University. The Oxford Thinking Campaign reached its initial target in March 2012 and the University now has a new target of £3 billion.

    The campaign is supporting students and the student experience, investing in new and existing academic posts and programmes and ensuring that the University of Oxford has the buildings and infrastructure to facilitate its world-class research and teaching.

    To find out more, visit www.campaign.ox.ac.uk.
  • Zaha Hadid
    The Investcorp Building will be Zaha Hadid Architects’ fifth building the in the UK after the Maggie’s Centre in Fife; the Riverside Museum, Glasgow; the Evelyn Grace Academy, Brixton; and the London Aquatics Centre.

    Among her many awards, Zaha Hadid has received the 2004 Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour. Two of her buildings have been awarded the Stirling Prize by the Royal Institute of British Architects; the MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome (2010) and the Evelyn Grace Academy in London (2011).

    Other recent awards include UNESCO naming Hadid an Artist for Peace and the Republic of France honoring her with the Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Zaha Hadid was also included in TIME magazine’s list of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ and Forbes List of the ‘World’s Most Powerful Women’.

    Zaha Hadid has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois and taught the masters studio at Columbia. She currently teaches at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna and is the visiting professor of architectural design at Yale.

    About Investcorp

    Investcorp is a leading provider and manager of alternative investment products. It has offices in New York, London and Bahrain and is publicly traded on the Bahrain Bourse (INVCORP). Investcorp has three main business areas: corporate investment in the US, Europe and the Gulf, real estate investment in the US and global hedge funds. As at 30 June 2012, Investcorp had $11.5 billion in assets under management. Further information is available at www.investcorp.com.
  • Nemir Kirdar
    Iraq-born Nemir Kirdar is Investcorp’s Executive Chairman and CEO. He began his banking career in New York in 1969 and joined The Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, in 1974. After overseeing Chase's banking network in the Arabian Gulf from 1976 to 1981, he founded Investcorp in 1982.

    Mr Kirdar graduated in Economics from the University of the Pacific in California and holds an MBA from Fordham University in New York along with honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Washington DC; the University of the Pacific, California; and Richmond, the American International University in London. With his long interest in education, he has served on advisory boards at Georgetown, Harvard, Columbia and Cambridge Universities. He is the author of two published books on his native Iraq and his own life story.