Trees Down Here

Trees are the silent characters, narrating the architecture and life of Churchill College (opened in 1960) through its natural history. 6a’s Cowan Court (completed in 2016) inverted the spatial and material order of the picturesque Brutalism of the original college, shifting its mineral world of brick and shuttered concrete to timber. Cowan Court’s oak, both new and old, defines its structure and in turn encloses a central court filled with recently planted birch trees. The analogue materiality of Churchill College is matched by the film which, like the architecture and landscape, leaves traces of its own development. The human habitat is seen through nature – swaying trees, lost animals, birds of prey, the seasons – to create a new dreamlike environment in which any distinction between human life, architecture and nature is erased.