Edward Abraham Building, William Dunn School of Pathology
Supported by an RSA Art for Architecture development grant
Commissioned by EPA
Managed by Artpoint
Molecular Pool 2 was recommissioned as an embedded entrance wall feature following major reconstruction work at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology.
Molecular Pools was the outcome of Ackroyd & Harvey’s residency at the William Dunn School of Pathology 1999-2000. Working with virologist Dr William James and his team, Ackroyd & Harvey undertook research linked to molecular cell biology.
The residency, supported by an RSA Art for Architecture grant, informed design collaboration between the artists and architect Clive Guyer of Llewelyn-Davies for a courtyard garden adjacent to the School’s new Edward Abraham Building. The garden touched on the work being carried out in the department and extended the design language and philosophy of the new wing into the landscape.
“It has been almost two years since Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey won the opportunity to re-design the Inner Court at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford. Since then, a neglected open space, previously occupied by a temporary building and used functionally for human traffic across the department, has been transformed into a contemplative garden, complete with benches, two interlocking slate-fringed pools, an ornamental lawn, bamboo screens, limestone and slate-flagged paths and imaginative plantings. It is almost a contemporary update of the Willow pattern – a harmonious decorative scheme that also suggests a wider cosmological iconography.”
(Cultural Cultivation, Oliver Bennett)
