Oxford Ice Rink

The rink was commissioned by Oxford City Council. Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners designed it for an isolated plot on Oxpens Road, and it opened in 1984. For Clare Price, a conservation adviser at the Twentieth Century Society, it is one of Grimshaw's first major commissions after he left his partnership with Terry Farrell.

Having become run down, the building was refurbished in 2012. In 2015 Historic England received a request to list it, which the Twentieth Century Society backed. In September 2020 the rink was still unlisted, despite two attempts by heritage campaigners.

The brief combined a place to meet with a sports facility and called for a wide stretch of ice free of columns; the ground was difficult and the budget modest. The practice chose to hang the building, which cut down on piling and eased the load on the long-span roof. A spine beam made of two rectangular box sections runs the 72 m length of the building and hangs from two 30 m masts, which refer to Oxford's spires and can be glimpsed from the historic centre.

The rink itself measures 56 by 26 m. Cold-store panels clad two-thirds of it and the north façade is fully glazed; lit up, it advertises what goes on inside, as the masts do. In 2015 Nicholas Grimshaw recalled that these off-the-peg panels had kept the cost down.

In 2002 the architectural commentator Martin Pawley judged the building unorthodox in appearance and very cheap, and placed it in the first generation of mast-supported, long-span structures to use the corrosion-resistant coatings developed for North Sea offshore work.

The rink offers public skating sessions, disco skates included, as well as a skating school and lessons for all ages, from children to adults. The Oxford City Stars ice hockey team plays its home games there. A café looks onto the ice. The council runs the facility together with the Leisure Solutions Community Trust.

Public skating sessions run every day of the week; they can be booked online, by phone or at reception, and skates can be hired. Wheelchair users can go onto the ice in their chair, using ramps.