The Oxford Middle East Centre is a new academic building for St Antony's College, University of Oxford, completed in 2015. The scheme provides 1,127m² of additional floor space and a new 117-seat lecture theatre, doubling the space available for the centre's expanding library and archive, and providing proper conditions to conserve collections previously stored in a basement.

Founded in 1957, the Middle East Centre is Oxford's facility for research and teaching on the Arab world, Iran, Israel and Turkey, holding the university's primary collection on the modern Middle East, a specialised archive of over 400 collections of private papers and more than 100,000 historic photographs dating from the 1800s. The building's design weaves through the restricted college site to incorporate existing protected buildings and trees, its stainless steel façade softly reflecting natural light to echo its context, most notably a curved reading room wall that steps around a century-old Sequoia tree, its roots protected by a drainage system beneath the foundations.

Environmental performance is built into the design: the below-ground lecture theatre and archive room are both ventilated through thermal labyrinths, with a ground source heat pump controlling temperature and humidity to secure the right conditions for the collection while minimising the need for mechanical air-handling.

This project was completed by Alex when he was Project Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects.