Most beautiful Oxbridge college. You vote, you decide.

I'm completely biased, but surely Worcester, Oxford should be right up there

Better than the award-winning School of Architecture at Lincoln which is already fraying round the edges.

Oxford and its colleges weren't always as relatively wealthy as they are now. The years from the 1930s to the 1970s were not kind to Oxford's investments and there was a massive building backlog for a university and colleges that had grown substantially in the post war period but which had built virtually nothing bar a few labs and the New Bod between 1914 and 1955.

Architecturally, this is the period that wanted to flatten St Pancras and built the new Euston. In Oxford, the plan was to build the inner relief road across Christ Church Meadow. The buildings you dislike were very fashionable.

However, the thing that ultimately damns them isn't their style but their build quality. However you look at them, however fashionable they might be in the future, they aren't capable of lasting that long. Most of the buildings built by Oxford between the late 50s and 1980 are life expired.

They were cheapjack buildings and the exceptions are few in number. Jacobsen's St Catz has lasted well as has the St Cross Building (Law Bod). Raymond Erith's LMH library might be the finest traditional building built in England in the 1950s. That isn't much for a collegiate university that probably built upwards of 200 buildings between 1955 and 1980.

You can see the difference today. The Sackler is a formal classical building whilst the Said is modernist, but one can realistically expect both to still be with us in 200 years time.

What Oxford has done is lost its Gothic heritage. Oxford was still building real Gothic buildings after the mock Gothick revival had started. Then of course, Oxford has some of the world's greatest Gothic revival buildings. But whilst classicism has fought back in Oxford, I don't know of any late 20th century or 21st century Gothic buildings in Oxford.

but at its worst when some lump of concrete has actually been tacked right onto some beautiful, two hundred year-old building.

a lot of them are listed buildings now though! Incredible.

King's ftw! The Gatehouse Clock and Chapel are just stunning!
Personally I think Trinity and John's are both gorgeous colleges - but frankly they're a bit too big aren't they?
"The more extravagant, the better" I suppose

At the lowest end!

I get the impression that at least some of the colleges would actually like to knock down, or at least alter some of their newer buildings. By some miraculous turn of events that defies all logic and popular opinion, a lot of them are listed buildings now though! Incredible.

Scanning down that picture it went from "lovely, lovely" to "WTF is that?"

Yeah not very impressive that is it... But every college has its dark secret...!

One has to be careful with popular opinion. It isn't so long ago that one could not give away Victorian gothic revival.

Emmanuel!

Well, la-dauphine, perhaps that was an extended-prison for the insurmountable hoard of convicts in Cambridge? ;b.

Most likely. It's an ideal setting.

Exeter College <3



Not that I'm biased either

So the conclusion is that Magdalen is the most beautiful then... (Thanks to our first-past-the-post voting system) Good that that's settled!