Landmarks: Oxon

People don't really notice architecture most of the time because building environments are not usually strong enough for them to be anything other than neutral. Some places are unquestionably lovely like the centre of Paris or the Cambridge Backs, but one still somehow expects to find buildings which give one a lift.

The study centre by Edward Cullinan in Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire is one of those buildings. It's definitely a piece of 20th-century architecture, in fact it's modernist, but at the same time it's built with the kind of traditional building materials that planning officers like. One of the walls is made out of an existing dry-stone wall which runs along the main street. From the street you are only really aware of it as a wall but if you look up there is a pitched roof of Cotswold stone.

Cullinan designed the two storeys as a series of study bedrooms which line up along the wall but are separated from it by a wide corridor. Access is achieved by a series of exposed staircases. All the rooms have balconies which are formed by recessing into the pitched roof. The corridor is lit by a line of glass on top of the wall under the eaves of the roof. In front there is a lawn which simply falls into the River Windrush. The overall effect is quite beautiful. Unfortunately it remained empty for many years after it was first designed.

It is difficult to say why one finds it so appealing. Perhaps it is the use of an existing landmark so that it fits into the wider plan, and yet looks very much of this century. It is just lovely.

Max Fordham is a building services engineer, whose firm is based in Gloucester Crescent NW1. Recent work includes designing lighting and air-conditioning for the new Tate Gallery at St Ives.