St Cross Building
Almost all Law Faculty lectures and seminars are held in the St Cross Building. Most academic administration is also carried out there. However, following the Oxford practice, most Law Faculty members are based in their colleges and do not have an office in the St Cross Building.
Bodleian Law Library Reading Room
The St Cross Building, home of the Law Faculty and the Bodleian Law Library, is a Grade II* listed building, a celebrated work of the late Sir John Leslie Martin (architect of the Royal Festival Hall in London) and Colin St John Wilson (architect of the New British Library). Also a major contributor to the project was Patrick Hodgkinson (principal architect of London's Brunswick Centre) who was then based at Martin's studio in Cambridge. Design and construction took place between 1960 and 1964.
The building is made up of three interlocking cubes of different sizes, with a central common area containing lecture theatres and rooms where the cubes overlap. According to Geoffrey Tyack's Oxford: An Architectural Guide (1998), 'Martin subscribed to Le Corbusier’s belief that “the plan is the generator".
Elaine Harwood (English Heritage) speaks about the architecture of The St Cross Building, home to the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of English, and the Bodleian Law Library, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in October 2014.