VISITORS to Oxford Brookes University can see an extraordinary new piece of public art unveiled this week.

Located outside the John Henry Brookes Building, in Headington, the Rain Pavilion comprises steel, leaf-like structures stemming from a timber pool at the base.

For a few minutes every hour during the day, a shower of rain falls from the leaf-like canopy into the floating timber platform below, to give people a sensory experience of rain tip-tapping, trickling and dripping.

The design was originally conceived in a competition by architecture students Alexandra Horsman and Charlotte Birch.

Fellow architecture student James Palmer said: “Working on it has been a fantastic educational experience.”