The Chapel and Lodge scheme is expected to be a meeting place for scientists working at the Ellison Institute of Technology’s neighbouring research campus, which is currently being built by Laing O’Rourke and is expected to be completed next year.
The campus is also designed by Foster + Partners, which is transforming part of the former Littlemore Hospital site, and an adjacent plot on Oxford Science Park into 300,000sq ft of research laboratories and education space.
READ MORE: Norman Foster designing labs complex
Construction expert Mace has been tasked with partially demolishing and extending a £184m laboratory centre at Oxford Science Park after the scheme was bought by the technology institute.
Revised plans are now being drawn up by architects Foster + Partners.
The latest proposals, submitted to Oxford City Council will create 62,000 sq m of laboratory space for the Generative Biology Institute (GBI) and the Plant Biology Institute (PBI).
EIT said the restaurant, which would be a short distance from the main campus, would offer a “unique opportunity to host and gather some of Oxford’s greatest minds to share a drink, enjoy a meal, and connect”.
Larry Ellison (Image: Steve Walker/Wikimedia Commons)
Foster + Partners is acting as lead architect and landscape architect on the scheme, with others working on the project including heritage practice Donald Insall Associates, according to Building Design magazine.
The proposed site for the restaurant is an unlisted 19th century former chapel and an adjoining lodge which previously served as the former hospital’s superintendent’s house.
The chapel was converted into offices in the late 1980s, while the lodge has served as the headquarters of the Berks Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust.
The former chapel in Littlemore (Image: Ellison Institute of Technology)
Under plans submitted by EIT to the city council at the end of last year, the site would be extensively remodelled with the lodge becoming an entrance and bar area with a series of small lounge spaces.
This would be connected via a new glazed walkway running around the edge of a “secret garden” to the chapel, which would be transformed into a larger bar and restaurant space.
At the science park, the revised scheme for the technology institute involves extending the scheme’s three under-construction laboratory buildings and linking them with two new atriums to create a single research and development facility.
What the Ellison Institute of Technology will look like (Image: Oxford City Council/EIT)
Under the revised plans, car parking provision will be reduced from 861 spaces to 332, reflecting lower staff numbers, with 264 cycle spaces provided.
The institute focuses on research in health, food security, climate change and artificial intelligence.
It has also bought the Eagle and Child pub from St John’s College, which is being rebuilt by Norman Foster’s architects, and is due to reopen next year. It has been closed since 2020.
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