Sir - The claim (Letters, November 12) that Zaha Hadid's design for extending the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College responds "with sensitivity" to the site is surprising.

This large structure is set against the western boundary of the garden of St Giles' and St Margaret's vicarage, the one property in the area St Antony's does not own. It rises to the eaves of 66 Woodstock Road and projects round the southern boundary of the vicarage garden.

The building links 66 Woodstock Road, one of a pair of semi-detached houses built in 1875, and 68 Woodstock Road, designed by H.G.W. Drinkwater in 1887 and on the list of buildings of local interest. It collides with the Victorian houses, engulfing the corners of 66 and 68.

A glazed area with a pronounced rim, shaped like a gigantic television set, has been jammed in awkwardly at a right angle to the garden facades of 66 and its pair 64.

The entire structure will be clad in fibreglass panels which seem unlikely to weather well near trees in the Oxford climate and may be difficult to maintain.

Since bookstacks can be sunk and a library benefits from top lighting, it might be expected that any structure along the vicarage garden bound- aries would be kept to a neighbourly single storey.

If this were treated as a plinth, any higher part of the building could be pulled back from the Victorian houses, respecting the grain of the area. St Antony's also plans another building on the Woodstock Road south of 64. A masterplan seems needed for the entire site.

Zaha Hadid's sculpted structure might be acceptable by itself.

But in its present materials and form it will not enhance the setting of the preserved Victorian buildings or the North Oxford conservation area.

Mark Barrington-Ward, Oxford