The Faculty Building

The Faculty Building was designed by Edward Cullinan and the construction was supervised by Colin Rice. The building was made possible by the generosity of a number of corporate and individual benefactors. It was opened on 23 November 2000 by Her Majesty the Queen. The tenth anniversary was celebrated on 2 December 2010, by many friends of the Faculty, former students, original benefactors, and others who have since supported the work of the Faculty.

the faculty of divinity staircase

 

From Architecture Today, January 2001:

On the Library:

‘The library, in the most elevated position in the building, seems conceived with Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis’ belief in the power of light in mind – it has the ethereal quality of a place half-way to heaven’

On the Faculty Building’s Design:

‘Against the gravity of its surrounding buildings, the Divinity Faculty is a jaunty building. The horizontal banding of its aluminium sun-shades gives it a slightly art deco air, almost a seaside levity; and the apparent incompleteness of its exteriors is a striking contrast to the absolute finality of the others’

On the Runcie Room:

‘The principal lecture theatre [the Runcie Room] in the basement, surprisingly wide and shallow, seems as if set to encourage the disputation of the mediaeval chapter house. I have never seen a large lecture theatre in which it would be so easy for every member of the audience to see and hear every other member and yet be so close to the speaker’

On the Faculty Building’s Architectural Atmosphere:

‘If the Divinity Faculty is a building which makes its occupants feel “at home”… Perhaps we should see this change as connected with the university’s need to make itself seem a less exclusive institution and to show that “elite” need not mean “inaccessible”’