Winter 1971: A brutalist's banquet

Few architects left their mark on 1960s and 70s Oxbridge quite as indelibly as Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis, the practice behind the University Centre in Cambridge. In winter 1971, HKPA partner John Partridge shared with Concrete Quarterly the thinking behind one of its most celebrated projects, the Hilda Besse Building in Oxford, now grade II-listed.

This new dining hall for St Antony’s College was built at around the same time as the University Centre and shared many of the same characteristics: expressed precast cladding, a dramatic roof structure over the dining area, and framed views over green space.

It also wrestled with the same tensions, needing to sit within its rarefied historic context, but without “such philosophic considerations” in any way impairing the modern quest for efficiency in its day-to-day workings.

The galleried dining hall itself, which rose through the building’s first and second storeys, aimed to “get the best of both worlds”, Partridge explained. “Most traditional dining halls are characterised by their lack of windows, apart, that is, from clerestorey or rooflighting. They are based on medieval halls and they evoke the corporate qualities of more protected inward-looking groups.

At St Antony’s we set out … to design a hall that was both outward and inward looking. This meant that the view windows had to be designed so that they did not lessen the impact and strength of the walls enclosing the space.”

The ”splay-sided” projected concrete windows were intended to “contain” the views of the college gardens and “cut off the space so that there is no sense of the flow of landscape outside”. But the faceted frames could be lit at night from outside so that the view never became dead.

The play of structure and light is a constant theme. The main hall was illuminated from within each square of the diagonal roof grid, with “pools of light thrown down to table top level”. And, much like the University Centre, the cladding was set forward of the precast frame, clearly emphasising the functional distinction and, at night, allowing light to gently seep through at the seams.

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