Mansfield College appointed Feilden Fowles Architects for its Estate Transformation Project following an invited competition in 2023. The College has now submitted a planning application to Oxford City Council for this major redevelopment.

The College’s original buildings, designed by Basil Champneys and completed in 1889, form the northern range of the site and reflect Mansfield’s non-conformist origins. Today the College continues to be a disruptor in Oxford, recognised for its radical stance to access with the most diverse cohort of students in Oxford and over 90%of whom are from state school backgrounds. The College has a feeling of openness, marked by the absence of a gated entrance and allowing its community and visitors to freely enter and enjoy the College setting. This spirit of inclusivity and social purpose has shaped the direction of the Estate Transformation Project and design approach from the outset.

The brief for the project involves a holistic transformation of the main College site.The centrepiece is a new south range, providing 174 study bedrooms, a new Porters’ Lodge gatehouse and entrance garden, teaching and learning facilities, social spaces, workspace for operational staff, and ancillary accommodation to support a broad range of College activities and uses.

The project includes refurbishment and additions to the Grade II* North Range to improve user experience, accessibility and operations,and a site-wide landscape design led by Tom Stuart-Smith Studio that consolidates the estate into a coherent whole which is inviting and accessible to all. The transformative project will not only provide high-performance new buildings, but also improve the existing listed building fabric, substantially reducing operational carbon and enabling the College to reach its ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2030.

Read more on the Architects’ Journal here.

We’re incredibly honoured to receive the prestigious Gold Award at the Wood Awards 2025 for the Urban Nature Project at the Natural History Museum!

Named “the UK’s best new timber project”, the transformed gardens are home to two new buildings: the Nature Activity Centre; and the Garden Kitchen, which were designed alongside structural engineers engineersHRW and specialist timber design and sub-contractors Xylotek.

The Nature Activity Centre is an education building which includes a classroom, support areas for the garden staff and a science lab. The single storey building includes an asymmetric pitched roof formed from solid Douglas Fir rafters and purlins which dramatically overhangs by several meters to provide an outdoor covered space for learning, as well as celebrating the capture of rainwater. The Garden Kitchen is a timber and stone pavilion building, functioning as a cafe, events space and a seasonal storage and display space for exotic plants, in the spirit of historic Victorian garden structures. The structural frame, which is constructed from Douglas Fir glulam timber, rises up in the main cafe to create a taller glazed lantern.

Our team worked closely with landscape architects J&L Gibbons, and led a multidisciplinary design team including Gitta Gschwendtner, engineersHRW and Max Fordham. The design team worked alongside Museum scientists to sensitively develop a series of outdoor living galleries, providing opportunities to learn about and explore nature.

Find out more about the project here.