Above: Image from O'Shea's original vision (2014, p. 6).
Project Brief
This design code has been shaped around the requirements of the project brief set out by Oxford City Council, which are:
• The development should be mostly residential, though there should be some incorporation of other uses in order to help ensure the perks of a mixed-use development will benefit future stakeholders.
• Housing developments must achieve high levels of environmental efficiency in all respects (i.e. from the buildings themselves down to the methods of waste management).
• Building envelopes and open spaces must be ‘flexibly’ designed to allow changes in lifestyles, family composition and uses.
Above: At current, the two-blocks in O'Shea's masterplan are fully residential (see above diagram (2014, p.17)); As a result of the revision of O'Shea's vision to include (the aim of creating) "a healthy, vibrant and enriched mixed use neighbourhood", it has been deemed neccessary to re-work the purely-residential concept in favour of a mixture of uses.
Vision
In addition to the requirements of the aforementioned project brief, this design code was to be informed by O’Shea’s 'vision' for the Oxford's Western Link masterplan, which read:
“Stitch together natural and human systems for the creation of a healthy, vibrant and enriched neighbourhood,
Create the opportunity for greater energy efficiency within a robust and resilient urban form,
Reinforce connections to the surrounding neighbourhood through a permeable street network - increasing walkability, thereby footfall to support the local centre,
Provide a variety of places for the community to live, engage and explore throughout all stages of their lives”
However, due to the need to better incorporate the requirements of the project brief into the overall vision for the redevelopment, the original vision has been revised to read (changes are indicated by purple font):
“Stitch together natural and human systems for the creation of a healthy, vibrant and enriched mixed use neighbourhood,
Create the opportunity for greater energy efficiency within a robust, flexible and resilient urban form, with particular attention paid to housing in this respect,
Reinforce connections to the surrounding neighbourhood through a permeable street network - increasing walkability, thereby footfall to support the local centre,
Provide a variety of adaptable and flexibly designed places for the community to live, engage and explore throughout all stages of their lives, and therefore is adaptable to changing lifestyles”.
Above: Extract from O'Shea's 3D CAD model of the sub-section of the Oxford's Western Link masterplan (2014), to which this design codes relates.
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK
This website has been designed to act as an informative design code for architects and developers participating in the long-awaited ‘renaissance of the West End’ through redeveloping the ‘Oxpens’ site (development site 17), as identified in the West End Area Action Plan 2007-2016 (p. ii, 2007).
This design code, The Oxpens Design Code focuses specifically on guiding the morphology of two particular blocks (see image below right) that were planned within a subsection of an overall masterplan for redeveloping the Oxpens site – Oxford’s Western Link (2014) – which was designed by the Oxford Brookes University MA in Urban Design student, Shannon O’Shea, as part of her work for the postgraduate module Urban Design Studio II.