img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek
Credit: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

If you wanted to see scales in Oxford you’ve always had to walk through its Museum of Natural History to reach the anthropological oddities of the Pitt Rivers Museum beyond. But you needn’t have gone so far. Above your head in the Museum of Natural History’s main hall, its Irish architects Deane and Woodward were, back in 1861, making their own scales – 8,500 diamond-shaped glass tiles for its roof. Now, as part of the building’s £2m refurbishment, which includes the leaking roof, architect Purcell has used the 500cm2 tiles as a template, putting 10mm Pilkington Optifloat clear glass slumped in a ceramic mould to reproduce them – NOT something you’ll want to do with the contents of any bell jar in the Pitt Rivers.

 

Latest

A love of libraries and a mission for mass timber helped Madrid’s SUMA win the EUmies Award for Emerging Architecture for its Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona

Interview with the Spanish architect of Gabriel García Márquez Library

Built-in cement plants and mycelium-inspired towers? SOM and Illinois Institute of Technology unite to produce Masters in tall buildings considering future cities in the context of density and climate change

Built-in cement plants and mycelium-inspired towers

Berlin architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke see their project for the Technical University at Braunschweig take the prize for viable, sustainable and cultural design

Sustainable project for the Technical University at Braunschweig takes coveted prize

The outward-facing, sustainable, timber Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona gives Madrid-based SUMA Arquitectura the prize with its transformative community impact

Gabriel García Márquez Library rethinks the typology

Learn more about nurturing practice-client relationships and turning the short-term into the long-term

Learn more about nurturing practice-client relationships and turning the short-term into the long-term