Making buildings: How Wright & Wright created pioneering Passivhaus student housing for Oxford college

Wright & Wright Architects has created Oxford’s first Passivhaus-certified student accommodation while seamlessly incorporating and reflecting the rich history and nature that surrounds it. Set within character gardens, the scheme for St Edmund Hall college incorporates three new buildings, a low-carbon retrofit of a Victorian villa and the refurbishment of a Grade II-listed common room. Naila Yousuf, partner and project architect, explains how they did it.

How did Wright & Wright win the project? 

Naila Yousuf In 2020, as the world was emerging out of the Covid lockdown, St Edmund Hall launched a competition for a full commission, and we were fortunate enough to be selected. 

The college’s aim was to accommodate all its undergraduate students within college properties, enabling them to return private rental homes to the local community. This site, about a mile from the college’s main campus, was selected for redevelopment. It replaced a collection of buildings from different eras, which housed 56 students and staff. The completed scheme delivers 127 ensuite student bedrooms, shared amenities, communal areas and gardens. 

The key aspect of our winning scheme was its Oxford village-like quality, picking up on the language within the conservation area, with high buildings to the street bordered by front gardens and lower “garden” buildings to the rear among mature gardens.

In addition, our submission celebrated the neighbouring building’s Arts and Crafts and Gothic Revival style through modern reinterpretation of prominent local elements such as gables, chimneys and dormers. 

What do you consider to be the most pioneering elements of the scheme? 

Firstly, the relationship of the buildings to the landscape is something that sets this project apart. Working closely with the landscape architect and client, we put a lot of effort into making the buildings interrelate to the outdoor spaces (or garden rooms) in terms of scale, positioning, materiality and views. Our aim was for generous and collegiate spaces inside and out. The result is an 88% biodiversity net gain.

Secondly, the combined sustainability achievements of the scheme, which takes a fabric-first approach including Passivhaus Classic new-build certification, a deep retrofit of a 1874 Victorian villa, and the use of low embodied carbon materials. In addition, it uses renewable energy such as bio-solar green roofs, air-source heat pumps and highly efficient mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems. 

The new buildings’ superstructure is made from prefabricated, renewably sourced cross-laminated timber (CLT), chosen with future disassembly and reuse in mind, while also having low embodied carbon and enabling precision of assembly. 

This meant a fast pace during installation of the CLT frame, with a building floor being added per week. Our efforts resulted in an area-weighted upfront embodied carbon figure of 478kgCO2e/m² across the three new-build elements – up to a 70% reduction in operational energy demand compared with a standard regulations-compliant build – and 100% fossil-fuel-free operation.

The third pioneering element is how the scheme celebrates UK-made traditional crafted construction materials, echoing the textures of its conservation area neighbours. For example, it uses 85,000 handmade red clay hung tiles produced by Keymer, the UK’s last remaining manufacturer of handmade tiles, using clay from its Wealden quarry in Sussex, as well as 200,000 handmade light red bricks, produced at Ibstock’s Swanage facility, one of the few in the UK still using traditional hand-thrown processes. 

How does the scheme respond to its conservation area site?

The site is bordered by the University Parks and lies within the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area (NOVSCA), one of Britain’s most historically sensitive neighbourhoods. In the mid-to-late 19th century, Norham Gardens was built with large Gothic and Italianate villas set in generous gardens.

On the street facade, the new-build contemporary villa sits beside an 1874 Victorian villa at number 17, extending that facade line to finish the street frontage, joining up with number 19. Blue brick string courses, clay ridge tiles and stone window frames follow the decoration of neighbouring buildings. We reinstated front gardens, boundary walls and railings, while the front elevations mimic the roof pitch and silhouettes of the street.

One characteristic of the conservation area is its ‘planned openness’, with wide, tree-lined streets and spaces in between the villas for gardens. We replicated this by framing several long views within the scheme from the street through to gardens and the University Parks landscape beyond. Each building is connected to a generous outdoor space, allowing communal areas to overflow into garden rooms. Four distinct garden types are woven throughout the site, mimicking the area’s lush green spaces. 

How does the design incorporate students’ needs?

The design is deliberately human-scaled, with cohorts of students occupying separate blocks. Each individual building has clusters of between six and eleven study bedrooms, which share a communal kitchen and dining room. Feedback was gained from students about the design, and a full-scale sample student room was constructed to test aspects such as furniture layouts and positions of sockets. 

The overall design encourages students to self-direct their experience by supporting a range of live-work styles through the various types of spaces offered inside and out. Unexpected encounters and spaces for people to come together are encouraged throughout the scheme, such as through outdoor benching and window seats.

Five accessible bedrooms and one ambulant-accessible bedroom are included and distributed across the scheme, with one providing an option for a carer to live next door.

Inside, there is a homely feel. Students have chosen the 150 artworks from the college’s art collection that feature in the communal areas, including botanical paintings and theatre posters. Care has been taken to select natural and low volatile organic compound (VOC) interior materials, such as the paint, to further support occupants’ wellbeing. At the entrance, visitors are greeted with the display of a Roman brooch found on the site during construction. 

How does the landscaping around the scheme enhance the design?

This is something we developed very early on, informed by St Edmund Hall’s principal, Kathy Willis, who is also professor of biodiversity at Oxford University. Her book Good Nature (2024) explores the growing evidence around the health and wellbeing benefits of everyday exposure to nature. 

Student common rooms are placed on the ground floor, enabling direct overflow space to the gardens. Throughout the scheme, windows frame the green landscape that thrives beyond the buildings, flooding the interior spaces with light.

The scheme is continually blurring the outside-in and inside-out with natural finishes, such as oak veneer, cork floors and green hues, which are present in floor finishes, stairs and accent wall paint. We used the historical trick of applying the colour “invisible green” on the window frames, combined with climbers clambering up elevations, all further blending the gardens into the buildings and vice versa. Overall, we feel this scheme will suitably support the psychological health and wellbeing of its academic community. 

We worked with the landscape architects and Oxford Botanic Garden to introduce endangered climate-resilient tree species and various habitats such as swift boxes, bat bricks, timber refuges and dead log stacks. We also included an open boundary fence with the University Parks to further strengthen biodiversity.

How does the design prepare for future heatwaves and droughts?

Rainwater harvesting is embedded throughout the site via permeable paving, green roofs, swales and a rainwater-fed ecology pond. On the inside, all the water fittings are low-flow, and showers are on timers. With the new buildings being Passivhaus, the walls are about 0.5m thick, providing stable temperatures. And when extreme temperatures occur, the mechanical ventilation systems can kick in.