MJP Architects was appointed to design the Kendrew Quadrangle at St John’s College, Oxford in 2006, and Modus Operandi was subsequently appointed to advise and manage two art commissions.
Artist Ian Monroe was commissioned to create a pattern for a screen in the new Kendrew Building of St John’s College. The resulting work, Palimpsest, contains traces of a once legible text from the St John’s College Founders Letter, written in 1566 by Thomas White. Taking inspiration from Sir John Kendrew’s use of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of a molecule by capturing its diffraction ‘shadow’, the artist has transformed the original text into the multilayered geometric design of the screen.
The St John's Kendrew Quadrangle redevelopment won a 2011 RIBA award.
