Herzog & de Meuron Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University

摘要

Herzog & de Meuron has added its name to the glittering roll call of architects to have built in the university city of Oxford. In recent years many have attempted to add to its historic architecture, from Rafael Vinoly to Zaha Hadid. And here, as you walk from the train station, having passed Dixon Jones' now well-embedded Saied Business School, in the middle of an unfinished masterplan beside Niall McLaughlin's Somerville College courtyards you find the Swiss practice's Blavatnik School of Government. This department of the university was never designed to copy Oxford's historic architecture. 'In a city as richly historic as this, there is a temptation to copy, which is not only difficult, but dangerous, too,' says senior partner Jacques Herzog. According to Herzog, the building's competing geometries and cantilevered forms were designed to break down the scheme's mass and respond to its context.