Winners at the 2026 RIBA South Awards for The Spencer Building

2026 UK RIBA South Award

When the Old Library at Corpus Christi College no longer met the modern conservation standards, the college set out to deliver something special. The Spencer Building, a new special collections centre and library in Oxford, is one of the first Grade I-listed Passivhaus-certified buildings in the UK.

Achieving Passivhaus energy performance is challenging for any building, but for a heavily constrained 16th century campus and a building with significant historic fabric retention, it is exceptional. The College brief asked a lot from a difficult corner site sandwiched between the medieval city wall, the Grade I-listed Old Library, and the Garden Quad. The library houses one of Oxford’s most significant collections, including manuscripts and early printed books of national and historical importance.

Wright & Wright Architects’ scheme consolidates archival storage for precious collections and additional study spaces into a purpose-built, accessible new building with close environmental controls. It required enormous care and patience to successfully resolve sensitive relationships between the listed fabric and neighbouring historical context. 

Three historic facades are retained, while a fourth new one creates a civic presence towards Oriel Square and a dialogue between new and old. The central circulation core is established behind the new facade to resolve multiple accessibility challenges and provide a clear spatial orientation.

This core and the adjoining atrium together form a light-filled space with impressive views towards the iconic Radcliffe Camera and a social heart for the building. Smart spatial arrangement supports passive environmental control of the building. 

A rigorous and robust achievement

The archive space is inside the insulated bunker adjacent to the thermal mass of the medieval city wall, which further stabilises its environmental conditions. Most of the study and research spaces are close to windows, well daylit and naturally ventilated when conditions allow. They also enjoy framed views of some of Oxford’s historic landmarks.

To ensure comfortable summer conditions against both current and future weather, natural ventilation supplements the mechanical. Cool fresh air from low-level windows along the facades is circulated via the central atrium, to exhaust via the automated rooflights.

The Passivhaus strategy includes a super-insulated and airtight envelope with triple and quadruple glazing, plus photovoltaic panels, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), and a ground-source heat pump system. The measured energy use is well below the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge and the new UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard targets.

The Passivhaus approach allowed the team to design small, simple, and materially light mechanical and electrical systems, directly lowering embodied carbon in services, and resulting in a simpler building for the college to operate.

The jury recognises the client’s extraordinary ambition in setting out to deliver one of the UK’s first Grade I-listed Passivhaus buildings, and commends the architect for exceptional focus on detail and for embracing multidisciplinary collaboration, which is demonstrable through the building and in the achieved Passivhaus Classic certification.

The rigour and robustness of the now Passivhaus-standard building will safeguard sensitive collections for many generations and serve as an example for other historic buildings in the UK.