Sensitive, Listed Refurbishment Townsend Building

We were appointed by the University of Oxford as RIBA Stage 4 architects to deliver the refurbishment and conversion of two floors within the Grade II listed Townsend Building in Oxford’s Science Area. Designed by Thomas Graham Jackson and constructed between 1908–1910, the building forms part of the Oxford Central Conservation Area and continues to support world-leading research within the Department of Physics.

The project transforms a series of redundant laser laboratories and small cellular offices into flexible, contemporary and collaborative workspaces for two new research groups. Across the first and second floors, new open-plan research areas are introduced alongside private offices for senior academics, meeting rooms, tea points and breakout spaces. Later interventions - including suspended ceilings, obsolete services and non-original fittings - are removed to reveal and celebrate original architectural features, with curved trusses and historic ceiling forms exposed wherever possible. New rooms are formed as lightweight, independent ‘box-in-box’ structures to preserve the legibility of the historic volume, while carefully positioned ventilation louvres and plant have been discreetly integrated to meet modern performance requirements within the listed context.