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£35m quad for St John’s

St John’s students, fellows and alumni celebrated the official opening of the college’s new £35 million quadrangle on Saturday.
Kendrew Quadrangle is named after the Noble Prize winner and former St John’s President, Sir John Kendrew. The quad will provide seventy student rooms, a law library, a gym, café, archives, music practice areas and an events room. It is one of the largest building developments undertaken by an Oxford college in recent years.

Taking nearly a decade of planning by the college, the new quad’s design has been praised for its cutting edge approach to energy consumption and sensitivity to local surroundings.
Its innovative technology makes it one of the University’s most environmentally friendly projects to date. Geothermal heat pumps and a wood chip burner mean it has just half the carbon footprint of a conventional design.

Matthew Thomlinson, a second year St John’s student, said, “The law library looks like a really great working atmosphere, it will really help with my learning. I like that its green and eco-friendly.”
A spokesperson for St John’s said, “Kendrew Quadrangle is a first-rate building in a modern idiom that responds sensitively to the unique context of the college and the city. These top class facilities will help us to continue to attract the most able students and academics.”

Current third years at St John’s will be the first ever residents of the quadrangle. Its thirty undergraduate rooms were, according to the college JCR, “snatched up by Finalists” in the annual room ballot.

The extra accommodation space will allow St John’s postgraduates and academics to live in college for the first time.

The new building forms part of a larger project which involved the restoration of older college buildings, including a seventeenth century barn which was converted into a new exhibition and performance space.

MJP Architects, who designed the quad, also created St John’s garden quadrangle, completed in 1994, and the 2004 extension of the Senior Common Room.

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