Oxford Brookes
A city for bikes
Whilst in Oxford last week my stepdaughter had somewhat of an ‘epiphany’ with regards to bikes and cycling in general. She has refused to ride a bike for the last few years as apparently ‘she looks stupid’ and ‘it’s pointless’, this is not an issue as she currently gets ferried around by Nottingham City Transport and Dad’s taxi.
However, while walking and driving around Oxford she became aware of the fact that bikes were numerous and also appeared to be getting places much faster than we were in our car, or indeed the buses were. It was at this point that she made the memorable statement ‘”well I suppose if I do come here I will have to get a bike”.
Now this is an earth shattering statement, but it also highlights something – we are very poor at dealing with cycling access in this country. Oxford on the other hand as a city has embraced the bike – there are cycle paths everywhere and cyclists are protected from traffic wherever possible by extra curbs and similar devices. Consequently it is a much safer city to ride a bike in – something that is very rare in this country (but common on the continent).
So if a teenager who wouldn’t ‘be seen dead’ on a bike in Nottingham (and we have a fair number of cycle paths) would happily use one in Oxford, what does this tell us?
We are not working hard enough towards helping bike access in our cities, it is about time that we got them off the roads and onto a proper set of cycle routes (like in Holland) – it’s greener and it would also make us all healthier (saving money in the NHS?).
Time for some action by central government?
A great bit of architecture…..
Last week I had a day out in Oxford, my stepdaughter Star had to deliver her portfolio to the University, so I had time to have a good look and take some photos in the town centre. One of the things that I was keen to see was the Ashmolean museum which had a new building grafted onto it a couple of years ago – it particularly interested me because it can’t really be seen externally, it is all about the internal space.
The museum itself is apparently the oldest in the UK, having been founded in 1683 to display the Universities collections. Consequently the main frontage is very ‘classical’ in design, so any addition was always going to be somewhat ‘controversial’!
As is the ‘norm’ with this style of ‘add on’ it is very obviously new – but it does in my view work very well as a space and has some nice features. In particular the ‘cascade’ staircase and its associated glass walkways.
I believe that if a building has a ‘wow’ factor but then does what it was designed for well, but without you really realising, it is a success. The Ashmolean is such a building. The gallery space is good, but the feature areas have a real presence and make you feel good.
It is well worth a look if you are in Oxford.
There are temporary buildings and then……..
Now we are all used to seeing ‘temporary buildings’ or what are generally known as portacabins (a trade name). They have found their way from the building site onto schools and any other place that needs short-term accommodation quickly and cheaply – and they can provide quite nice accommodation.
So it was no surprise to find a temporary style buildings on a University campus this weekend, what was a surprise was the size of it!
This building has a series of rooms used for seminars for up to 60 students (there must have been 9 or 10), plus two 100 seat lecture theatres, one at each end, plus toilet facilities – now that is a seriously large portacabin!
I gather from enquiries that it is the result of demolishing a building before getting consent for a replacement – which was subsequently refused – a lesson there for all of us!
It wasn’t like this in my day!
Last weekend we went to look at a potential University for my stepdaughter Star to go to – Oxford Brookes (in Oxford strangely enough!). I had heard good things about the University from work colleagues who have been and via other sources – and I have to agree with them, it appears to be a good, friendly place, with some excellent facilities.
As part of our ‘tour’ we looked at the accommodation while we were there, and the University has like most other similar institutes been trying to improve its student accommodation. We were shown around the new large accommodation ‘village’ below the campus and I have to say things have moved on a bit from my day!
When I was at Trent (now Nottingham Trent) I was in halls in the first year, but the facilities were shared, and in my following years I shared houses in various parts of the city – many of which had no heating installed, and one which only had an immersion for hot water (which was rarely used on cost).
The majority of the accommodation we saw had en-suite facilities, central heating (fair enough) but also wireless broadband etc! You do pay for the privilege however, the cheap and cheerful student accommodation of my day is long gone!
The university also has a ‘head leasing’ scheme with private landlords that allows them to manage the quality of the available private stock to a degree (in a similar way to the scheme run in Nottingham a few years ago). This should enable them to keep a reasonable quality stock for students while they develop more en-suite blocks with favoured developers.
All changes for the better I suppose, but I can’t help thinking that the time the toilet in our flat in Nottingham froze solid one night when I was a student hardened me up for later life!
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