Teaching an old cat new tricks; when working in the physical and theoretical shadow of Jacobsen and Banham, within a masterplan that was alleged not to be able to accommodate any more residential accommodation, how do you add to a modern masterpiece?

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2004 by Rob Gregory

On Jacobsen's ideal platform, an absolute architectural morality prevails--there can be no mistakes and no excuses, no afterthoughts and no escape clauses, about the siting of the individual components of the scheme. No room for improvization, no exploiting the happy accident--and no room for growth.' Reyner Banham

In his 1964 review, Reyner Banham may well be forgiven for arguing so forcibly that Arne Jacobsen's St Catherine's College in Oxford was complete. In his critical account for The Architectural Review--in which he somewhat provocatively described St Cat's as 'the best motel in Oxford'--Banham was as clear in his criticism as Jacobsen was in his vision. St Cat's could, he stated, be understood in a single sweep of the eye. It was, he observed, an exercise in elementary composition, the footprint of which was more a logical outworking of architectural proportion than a constraint of the site, which, as a reinterpretation of the closed courtyard, had made a valuable contribution to British collegiate architecture.

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But that was forty years ago. Today, when considering the subsequent lives of St Cat's, what would Banham, and perhaps more importantly Jacobsen, think of the college's ongoing expansion?

Banham's appreciation of St Cat's completeness was in hindsight somewhat misplaced. Not least on a practical level as the skeleton of the lecture hall and bell tower's fine concrete structure sat in sublime isolation for a number of months, but more generally because no work of architecture on this scale can ever truly be considered complete, regardless of its compositional purity. In sustaining living communities, collections of buildings such as colleges and campuses, as microcosms of the city typology, always need to grow. Adolescence, maturity, decay and (we hope) rebirth, form an inevitable cycle, which when let to run its natural course will reveal much more of the measure of an architect's success. Few structures ever deserve to be set aside and preserved in isolation, especially so early in their life, a fact that even St Cat's could not escape. Over subsequent years, several additions have been made to Jacobsen's work, such as the Alan Bullock and Mary Sunley buildings by Jack Lancaster, and Sir Philip Dowson's reconfiguration of the college's external entrance spaces. However, the most significant work to extensively upgrade and expand the college has been the responsibility of Manchester-based architect, Hodder Associates.

Following his highly publicized success in 1992, when he won the Royal Fine Art Commission / Sunday Times Building of the Year Award with his first ever building, Stephen Hodder was the surprise winner of an invited competition to build 50 new study bedrooms. At the age of only 35, having beaten significant entries by Chipperfield, MacCormac and Dixon Jones, the pressure was certainly on.

By his own admission, Hodder has on occasion struggled with expectations levelled on him following his early success--a feeling that was further compounded when he went on in 1996 to win the first ever Stirling Prize for Architecture (the annual British prize for an individual building). For a young architect leading a fledgling team, early comparisons with more established practices may well have been counterproductive, resulting perhaps in his recent and notable (and some may say wise) withdrawal from the architectural limelight. This said, Hodder's ongoing 11-year appointment with St Cat's can be seen as an important lifeline, affording him the time to work more reflectively on a significant body of conservation, installation and new-build projects that may well produce his most accomplished work to date.

Marked development can be seen between Hodder's relatively complicated competition scheme and the more refined phases of finalized proposals which embody many lessons learnt from his restoration of Jacobsen's work (an ongoing appointment that includes phased remodelling of original study rooms to include private bathrooms, upgrading of junior common room facilities--including the delightful integration of a new lecture theatre--and replacement of Jacobsen's original cladding with double glazing, which is soon to start on site.)

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The choice of Hodder's 1993 competition-winning scheme was a surprising one, regardless of his youth. With an intrusive adaptation of the squash court building to the south of the site, his approach seemed to break every rule set by Jacobsen, and flew in the face of Banham's observation that the site held no room for improvization. In a context where no two elements ever collide, where buildings and structural components are articulated with an awesome delicacy, Hodder's three-pronged collision with the squash court now seems wholly inappropriate. Yet, something in his approach must have impressed the judges, and when re-worked on a peripheral site the practical outcomes of his designs have been far more successful.