In 1961 St Aidan's was reconstituted as a full "council college", meaning that its governing council is a sub-committee of the university council, the university's governing body. It moved to its present buildings on Elvet Hill in September 1964, becoming one of the first of the university's "Hill" colleges. The college buildings are in a modernist style, having been designed by architect Sir Basil Spence and arranged in a semi-circular arrangement surrounding a central lawn. The original design was intended to represent the hand of God holding a jewel, with the curved corridors as the fingers, the straight corridors as his thumb, and a small chapel as the jewel. However, financial constraints prevented the chapel from ever being built and later extensions to the straight section did not follow the original idea.
