Brookes offers to 'bury' new building (From Oxford Mail)

Brookes offers to 'bury' new building

6:10am Thursday 18th June 2009

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OXFORD Brookes University is lowering its proposed new student centre and going underground in a bid to appease its neighbours.

The university says it is ready to add £5m to the cost of the scheme to reduce the height of the library building, the centrepiece of Brookes’ plans to redevelop its main Headington campus and create a new ‘gateway’ to Oxford.

The new proposals for the Gipsy Lane campus would see the new library with five storeys above the ground instead of six, taking more than three metres (about 10ft) off its height, by building a basement to compensate for the loss of the top floor.

Residents at Headington Hill, who are campaigning against the £150m scheme, last week submitted a “Stop Brookes” petition signed by more than 1,000 people.

They objected to Brookes’ plans on the grounds of noise, light pollution and the impact on the local sewerage system.

But the bulk of the objections focused on the size and position of the student centre, originally 25.8m high, which would house a library and teaching facilities.

Brookes’ deputy vice-chancellor Rex Knight said the university had decided to look again at the plans.

He said: “We had already responded to all the other issues. But the height is the one issue that we had not been able to respond to.”

He believed the redrawn scheme met residents’ concerns about the scale of the project, while allowing Brookes to realise its ambition to create a major new Oxford library and deliver its vision to transform the student facilities at Headington.

A mezzanine effect would mean the building would appear two storeys lower from residents’ homes.

Mr Knight added: “We have focused the biggest reduction in height to the area closest to the residential properties. The library will now be lower than the two tallest buildings on the site, the Abercrombie and Sinclair buildings.

“Achieving this has meant an enormous amount of effort, in order to meet the residents halfway. I think it is a reasonable compromise.”

The amended Brookes plan was submitted yesterday to Oxford City Council.

Work is due to begin in 2010, with Brookes wanting to open the new buildings in late 2012 or early 2013.

But Susan Lake, chairman of the Headington Hill Residents’ Association, representing about 20 households, dismissed it as not enough.

She said: “The university has made a great effort to revise the plans. But it seems to me as tinkering on the edges of its architectural plans. It does not address the main problems of too much massing, the location and the height. The reaction from my neighbours is that it still feels the same.”

The university says the top floors of the new library would close early, except at busy exam times, to meet concerns about lighting, while translucent glass would be used on the sides facing homes.

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