The new café and common room for staff, students and visitors at Kellogg College is a small project with a big impact.

Kellogg College is the University of Oxford’s largest and most international graduate college, with over 1,000 students from 90 countries following 110 programmes of study from across the University’s four academic divisions and the Department of Continuing Education.

The College is composed of a group of Victorian villas within the North Oxford Conservation Area, set within their own generous leafy gardens. The new cultural and social centrepiece building has created opportunities to transform and articulate the College setting and enhance its many gardens.

The College Hub is positioned to preserve the original villa boundaries and also to create four distinct College gardens, each with a different role and character. Key paths flank the building on all sides to link the College quarters, and provide students with opportunities to pop in, pause and chat with others as they encounter the Hub. 

Externally the single storey Hub is formed from brick walls topped with a metalwork frieze in response to the adjacent Victorian red brick boundary walls and metal railings. The interior is designed to be enduring, warm and welcoming. It is designed to be divisible so that it can serve a number of key uses such as performances and public events, as well as its daily common room and café function. Views of all parts of the College connect the Hub visually as the physical and social centre of the College

The environmental impact of the building is very small. It has been designed to Passivhaus principles with rigorous standards of air tightness and insulation to produce a very low energy building. Large panels of south facing glazing maximise useful solar gains with summer shading provided by the terrace structure. The project is the first Passivhaus certified building for Oxford University.