The Garden Building At St Hildas College

The Garden Building at St Hilda's College

Residential accommodation for students and graduates, built 1968–70 and designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, with Peter Smithson as job architect and Ove Arup and Partners as engineers. The building comprises 51 students' rooms on four floors plus one room for a member of staff, arranged around a central volume containing services, a separated stair compartment, and a cleaning staff room.

The structure uses pre-cast concrete posts and beams with concrete panels and a timber trellis. The entrance front is faced in pale brick with internal brick walls and a flat roof. A covered walkway, repeating the timber motif, links the building to the rest of the college and gives onto a projecting trunk room store that forms part of the original composition.

The three main facades overlooking the garden respond to a preserved beech tree and exemplify the Smithsons' interest in 'layering'. The facade is set behind a timber trellis running between each floor level, supported on capitals within the concrete frame. Aluminium horizontal sliding windows are set within timber frames. The entrance front, located at the rear when approached from the grounds as intended, features a central well of glazing set behind brick ends which continue as enclosures to the walkway.

The interior is notable for its fine timber and detailing. A timber staircase is enclosed by glass and timber partitions. All rooms have full-height doors with fitted cupboards and carefully planned dressing units. Mini-dressing rooms were conceived as storage for personal items while providing sound insulation from the corridor and pantry, with the remainder of each room left flexible through the absence of fitted furniture.

The Smithsons interpreted their brief as creating a building distinctly recognisable as a women's residence, distinct from traditional men's colleges. They responded to the fundamental English problem of needing abundant light by providing large windows, but screened these with an external timber member to reduce glare, provide privacy, and prevent casual overlooking of the building's interior. This timber screen, described by the architects as a kind of 'Vashmak' in untreated oak (pale grey when dry, brown when wet), draws from their Appliance House project of 1958 and their 1959 competition entry for Churchill College, Cambridge. The use of beige and brown tones marked a shift from the bright colours of their 1950s exhibition work, providing a neutral background for occupants' own decoration while enhancing views of the grounds.

The building employs a square plan with chamfered corners, repeating the strategy used in the Economist Group of buildings in Westminster (listed grade II*). The Garden Building represents a transition between the Smithsons' major projects of the 1960s and a gentler approach that conceived of buildings as frameworks for users' activities, embodying the art of inhabitation that informed their later work termed the Shift. This increased domesticity without loss of intellectual rigour parallels the work of their friend and fellow Team 10 founder Aldo van Eyck.