Romy rep62@cam.ac.uk

Romy Pfeifer ‘Please Identify Yourself’

In Cambridge, where the division between town and gown is compounded upon socio-economic segregation, finding relation to place that holds both the capacity to change, and the reliability of permanence is difficult. As such, the spaces against which we may define our identities become limited to our private homes.

The parts in-between are often more infrastructural than social, leaving little dedicated space for relating to one another and expressing ourselves outside of commerce.

My proposal looks to bridge an existing gap between night-time and day-time activities in Cambridge to offer an opportunity of connection to place. Built from the existing frames of two rows of garages near the Grafton Centre, the intervention might work as a public park, open to anyone at any time of day, while still providing insulated indoor spaces.

The design draws from a series of successful precedents from the last two centuries: a range of energetic social hubs, cabarets and clubs where people defined iconic cultures within architectural frames. From this, the proposal offers an armature for a collective experience of space, which balances the capacity for change with the necessity of permanence in an ever-changing city.