Sir Geoffrey Arthur Building 2

The Sir Geoffrey Arthur Building 2 is a student accommodation building for Pembroke College, Oxford. The project situated close to the city centre, directly facing the River Thames.

The accommodation is arranged with the main graduate block replacing the existing Damon Wells building footprint, housing the common room and ancillary facilities at lower ground level which opens-up onto a lower terrace into the existing quad.

The project site was located within flood zone 1, with contaminated ground remaining from the original city gas works. Flood compensation was incorporated within the lower ground undercroft alongside resilient measures to the habitable areas.

Construction works had to be carefully planned on a site with a significant number of constraints. These included a high groundwater table, which sits just below ground level during the winter, ground gas, congested existing below-ground services and restricted access to the site for construction vehicles. As part of the below ground drainage scheme a two-storey deep foul pumping chamber, was installed in these challenging conditions.

Options for the superstructure were appraised, taking into account: acoustics, buildability, logistics, embodied carbon, services distribution, speed of construction and future flexibility. Weighing-up these various considerations, an RC frame was considered the best fit.