Denys Wilkinson Building

Denys Wilkinson Building
The Denys Wilkinson Building from the Banbury Road with the large Van de Graaff generator superstructure and Thom Building in the background.
Denys Wilkinson Building is located in Oxford (central)
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Location of the Denys Wilkinson Building within central Oxford

The Denys Wilkinson Building is a prominent 1960s building at the southern end of the Banbury Road in Oxford, England, designed by Philip Dowson at Arup in 1967.[1]

The building houses the astrophysics and particle physics departments at Oxford University. It was originally built for the then Department of Nuclear Physics and named the Nuclear Physics Laboratory.[2] In 2001, the building was renamed as the Denys Wilkinson Building,[3] in honour of the British nuclear physicist Sir Denys Wilkinson (born 1922), who was involved in its original creation.

The building is located on the corner of Banbury Road to the west and Keble Road to the south. To the north is the tall Thom Building of Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, also built in the 1960s. It forms part of the Keble Road Triangle.[2] Attached is a large and distinctive fan-shaped superstructure that was built to house a Van de Graaff generator. Pevsner commented that this marked "the arrival of the 'New Brutalism' in Oxford".[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Sherwood, Jennifer and Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire. Penguin Books. p. 270. ISBN 0 14 071045 0. 
  2. ^ a b Tyack, Geoffrey (1998). Oxford: An architectural guide. Oxford University Press. pp. 319–320. ISBN 0 14 071045 0. 
  3. ^ "Denys Wilkinson Building". Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK. http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/pp/dwb/dwb.htm. Retrieved August 30, 2011. 

Coordinates: 51°45′35″N 1°15′35″W / 51.7596°N 1.2596°W / 51.7596; -1.2596

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