Foster + Partners has secured planning approval to redesign the Daubeny Buildings on the Ellison Institute of Technology's Oxford campus, replacing three standalone six-storey blocks with one interconnected complex, a decision that matters to building and architecture professionals because it confirms a live client can order a mid-construction architect and design change on a nine-figure scheme without abandoning the site entirely. Consideration was disclosed at £300 million for the wider Daubeny scheme, with earlier reporting putting the original contract value at £200 million.

The Ellison Institute of Technology is a research and development organisation founded by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, delivering a 190,000 sq m Oxford campus intended to house up to 7,000 employees.

Foster + Partners is a London-founded global architecture, engineering and design studio led by Lord Norman Foster, replacing original architect Scott Brownrigg on this scheme.

The redesign will strip out sections of already-completed superstructure, including parts of the upper floors and building envelope, to create two atriums linking the buildings, alongside a rooftop greenhouse for the Plant Biology Institute.

Mace Construct is the main contractor and will restart construction under the revised design.

The structural driver is the growing willingness of well-capitalised private clients to treat mid-construction design changes as a cost worth absorbing when the resulting building better serves long-term needs, here the collaboration atriums EIT judged necessary between three previously separate blocks.

For the sector, the timing matters because retaining and adapting the partially completed structure rather than demolishing and rebuilding entirely carries clear embodied carbon benefits, limiting the volume of material sent to waste compared with a full clearance-and-rebuild approach.

Mace's ability to pause, absorb an architect change from Scott Brownrigg to Foster + Partners, and restart construction on the same site shows major contractors increasingly building contractual and programme flexibility for exactly this kind of late-stage client-driven overhaul, rather than only for defects.

The broader implication for the sector is that architects and contractors on large, wealthy-client research and laboratory projects should expect deeper contractual protection for redesign scenarios, as super-rich individual backers increasingly treat construction programmes as adjustable rather than fixed once site work has started.

Source: Building / Construction Enquirer / Architects' Journal / Low Carbon Buildings