THIS is the startling building that Oxford University is proposing as a new addition to the city’s famous skyline.

If approved, it would be erected in Walton Street to become one of the more dramatic and visible structures on the university’s new Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, on the former Radcliffe Infirmary site.

The £30m building would house the university’s Blavatnik School of Government, Europe’s first major school of government.

It is being created thanks to a £75m donation from the billionaire tycoon Leonard Blavatnik, pictured above left. The semi-circular building has been designed by the world leading architects Herzog & de Meuron. It is the Swiss architects’ first design for any UK university.

Paul Goffin, Oxford University’s director of Estates, said: “The building pays tribute to features of Oxford’s skyline – its circular shape evokes the Radcliffe Camera and the design is squared off on one side like Christopher Wren’s distinctive Sheldonian Theatre.”

The huge project - which will cost £50m in total - will provide an important jobs boost, with the building scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2015.

A two-week public consultation opens today in the former Radcliffe Infirmary outpatients’ building in Woodstock Road.

It will be held on weekdays until August 1 from 9am to 5pm. The consultation will also be manned on Wednesday, July 25, and Tuesday, July 31, from 4pm to 8pm.

A second public consultation will be held in September, after comments on the initial plans have been considered. The scheme will be submitted for planning in October, with the city council’s planning committee expected to consider the application in March 2013.