By chance, I was back in Oxford again today, so took the opportunity of going to see David Kohn’s Gradel Quadrangle on Mansfield Road, a fascinating experiment in mannerism.  You enter (but, of course, I wasn’t allowed to enter) by an exaggeratedly curved pink sandstone porter’s lodge and just beyond the lodge, there is a mystery tower (what does it contain ?), and, beyond the tower, similarly curvaceous, but more restrained Cotswold stone student accommodation with pink edging. 

What to make of it ? 

Well, it maybe suffers from looking a bit too startlingly new, as if it had just popped out of the dressing up box, but it should age well and it lends a lot of character to an otherwise dull bit of Oxford – Mansfield College plus chemistry labs. 

David Kohn is an interesting architect who has worked in Barcelona.  He was one of the candidates to re-do the Sainsbury Wing.  I wonder what people would have thought if he had won.  It’s not exactly Venturi Scott Brown, more Gaudi meets arts-and-crafts.  No more shocking than Keble:-