More people, more landscape: St Edmund Hall’s sustainable transformation

Impressively, the project brings Passivhaus standards to student accommodation while more than doubling capacity, from 56 to 127 bedrooms, without sacrificing the landscape.

Mature trees have been retained alongside new gardens, climate-resilient planting, biodiversity measures and sustainable drainage across a site overlooking University Parks. The result demonstrates how increased density does not necessarily have to come at the expense of landscape, biodiversity or the quality of the outdoor environment.

St Edmund Hall, known as Teddy Hall, is one of Oxford’s oldest academic societies and has housed undergraduates continuously since the 13th century. The Norham Gardens site, acquired by the College in 1980, had previously accommodated 56 students across a collection of buildings of different ages, developed incrementally over time, including a dominant 1970s extension that had obscured the character of the original Victorian villa.

The new scheme responds to the site’s history and village-like quality, extending the architectural language of North Oxford’s Victorian villas through a contemporary reinterpretation of historic forms, materials and craftsmanship. These references are combined with highly sustainable, low-energy architecture, demonstrating that contemporary environmental performance can be achieved without sacrificing character or a strong sense of place.

Naila Yousuf, Partner at Wright & Wright Architects, said: “Our ambition was to create student accommodation for the future, responding to both the climate emergency and the unique historic context of North Oxford. From the outset, St Edmund Hall was unwavering in its vision to set the highest benchmark for sustainable design, through which the student experience could also be democratised. We have sought to show that Passivhaus can be achieved in a highly protected conservation area, through a collection of carefully crafted cross laminated timber buildings with distinctive architectural character and a remodelled Victorian villa, all set within a richly planted landscape. Throughout, we have drawn on the craftsmanship and domestic scale of North Oxford to create a contemporary ensemble that feels both of its place and of its time.”

The new scheme enables all of the College’s undergraduates to live in College accommodation, releasing private rental homes back into the local market while providing purpose-designed student housing and a longer-term income stream.

Building at a different scale
The new accommodation is arranged across three buildings and smaller cluster flats for six to ten students, each with shared kitchens and dining areas. This reflects the scale of the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area, where large Gothic and Italianate villas sit within generous gardens.

The buildings respond to the two distinct characters of the site. Along the street, their scale and materials draw on the surrounding Victorian villas; towards the rear, they step down into smaller garden buildings, echoing the ancillary structures that historically occupied these plots. Together, the buildings and gardens create a more village-like arrangement, with carefully positioned gaps opening views through to the tree canopy of University Parks.

The treatment of the 1874 villa is central to this approach. A later 1970s extension had created a semi-detached arrangement, obscuring both the original villa and its relationship with the garden. Removing the extension allowed the original villa to be reinstated as a fully detached building, creating a clear gap through the site and, importantly, new views from the street towards the greenery of University Parks.

It was a brave move, particularly on a site where every square metre of development has significant value. Too often, development decisions prioritise maximising floor area, with views through a site or towards surrounding landscape lost as new buildings fill the available space. Here, the decision went the other way, prioritising visual connections, landscape and the quality of the wider scheme over simply maximising built area.

Designing with landscape
Landscape was not treated as a setting for the buildings but as part of the structure of the development from the outset.

Working with Bradley-Hole Schoenaich Landscape, the project created four distinct character gardens – village square, ecology pond, cloister garden and south lawn – conceived as outdoor rooms with different functions, planting characters and ecological conditions.

The gardens structure movement through the site, provide communal spaces and create direct connections between student accommodation, common rooms and the landscape. Ground-floor common rooms open directly onto the garden activity spaces, while views towards planting, mature trees and the surrounding conservation area bring landscape into the everyday experience of the buildings. Daylight, natural finishes and views of nature also strengthen the biophilic qualities of the accommodation.

The landscape helps make the density of the development feel less imposing. Buildings are positioned to create gaps and glimpses through to trees and parkland, while their scale changes across the site. Despite accommodating more than twice as many students as before, the external spaces have deliberately remained generous.

Student input was also part of the process, with focus groups and sustainability workshops informing the brief and design development.

Diverse and climate-resilient landscape
The planting strategy moves from woodland-style planting in more sheltered areas to resilient, drought-tolerant planting in more exposed locations, reflecting the different microclimates across the site and the need to build resilience into the landscape from the outset.

One of the observations from the tour was the decision to establish plants at a younger size rather than create an instant, fully mature landscape – an approach that echoes what I saw at the new Queen Elizabeth Garden in Regent’s Park. Smaller plants can establish deeper root systems early on, helping them become more resilient to climate pressures than mature nursery stock.

There is also a strong connection here with Sheila Das’s philosophy of Slow Gardening. Rather than presenting students with a finished landscape, the gardens will develop alongside them, allowing them to see and engage with the process of establishment, growth and change. The garden becomes something to experience over time rather than a completed backdrop.

That principle extends into the tree strategy, developed by the College’s garden team, Bradley-Hole Schoenaich and Oxford Botanic Garden. The emphasis is on introducing species that can respond to a changing climate, including Zelkova carpinifolia, Magnolia stellata, Acer griseum, Pinus nigra, Corylus colurna and Heptacodium miconioides.

Among them is the Franklin tree, Franklinia alatamaha, which is extinct in the wild and has been sourced through botanical garden collections, including Kew. The planting of endangered and rarely found species adds another dimension to the landscape, creating a living collection while providing opportunities for future propagation and the production of new trees.

Added hedging includes Acer campestre, Cornus mas, Corylus avellana and Crataegus monogyna, alongside biodiverse planting, climbers and other habitat-rich vegetation. Climbers are being established around less developed parts of the buildings, allowing the relationship between architecture and planting to strengthen gradually.

The project is delivering an 88% biodiversity net gain, with green roofs, an ecology pond, biodiverse planting, native hedging and habitat features all contributing. Existing ecological assets have also been retained and enhanced, including mature trees and an existing bat roost. Swift boxes, bat bricks, timber refuges and dead-log stacks provide additional habitat, while the boundary with University Parks helps maintain ecological connectivity and allows wildlife to move through the wider landscape.

Water and ecology working together
Water management has been integrated into the landscape rather than treated as separate infrastructure.

The site’s gently sloping topography has been used to direct and attenuate rainfall, with permeable paving, green roofs, swales and a rainwater-fed ecology pond forming part of the sustainable drainage strategy. A swale connects into the ecology pond, allowing rainwater to be filtered and managed at source while creating an additional habitat.

Bio-solar roofs combine photovoltaic arrays with biodiverse planting, creating different ecological conditions while contributing approximately 11% of the site’s electrical demand.

The approach demonstrates how drainage, biodiversity and planting can perform several functions simultaneously, rather than requiring separate areas of land for each purpose.

Materials, craft and context
The landscape sits alongside an equally considered approach to the buildings themselves.

New blocks use handmade brickwork, clay tiles and slate, sourced within the UK and selected to respond to the material character of the conservation area. Gables, chimneys, dormers and ornamental ironwork are reinterpreted in a contemporary architectural language.

Some 85,000 handmade red clay hung tiles were produced by Keymer, using clay from its Wealden quarry in Sussex, while around 200,000 handmade light-red bricks were produced by Swanage using traditional hand-throwing processes.

The aim is not to reproduce the surrounding Victorian architecture but to interpret its scale, proportions, materials and craftsmanship while meeting contemporary environmental standards.

Passivhaus and low-carbon infrastructure
The three new buildings have achieved Passivhaus Classic certification, with operational energy demand reduced by up to 70% compared with standard new-build benchmarks.

A fabric-first approach combines high levels of insulation and airtightness with triple glazing and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, removing the need for mechanical cooling. The new buildings use prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) structures, with concrete and steel used selectively where required. The area-weighted upfront embodied carbon figure for the new-build elements is 478kgCO2e/m².

Five air-source heat pumps provide heating and hot water across the site. Rather than placing the plant within the gardens, the equipment is concealed within the upper roof structures, keeping it out of sight and away from neighbouring properties. Solar generation is provided by 74 photovoltaic panels integrated into the green roofs and largely invisible from ground level.

The environmental strategy was developed with Max Fordham and covered fabric performance, embodied energy, air quality, daylight, water use and waste. The project was also measured against benchmarks including the RIBA 2030 Challenge and LETI targets during the design process.

Retrofitting the Victorian villa
Alongside the new Passivhaus buildings, the 1874 villa provides a clear demonstration of how an existing building and its landscape can be upgraded together. Government data records 4.18 million domestic properties in England and Wales built before 1900, although this figure covers all pre-1900 properties rather than Victorian homes alone. Across the UK, 5.9 million buildings were constructed before 1919, underlining the scale of the opportunity to improve the environmental performance of the existing building stock.

At Norham Gardens, the villa has been retrofitted to EnerPHit principles using breathable materials including wood fibre insulation, cork and lime-based insulating plaster, alongside conservation-appropriate glazing. Salvaged brick, slate and stone have been reused where later additions were removed, while the reinstated garden setting restores the relationship between the villa and the wider landscape.

The project demonstrates how historic buildings can be brought to high environmental standards while retaining their character and strengthening their connection with landscape – an approach with relevance well beyond Oxford as the UK looks to create a more sustainable future for its existing homes.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson from Norham Gardens is that a sustainable development can be low on energy and high on biodiversity, while creating a landscape that is generous, characterful and designed to evolve. It demonstrates that density, environmental performance and landscape quality do not have to compete – and that a landscape designed to grow and adapt can also sow a seed of resilience in the people who use it, carrying that understanding of growth, stewardship and adaptation beyond the College.