CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURE
Summer/Autumn 2007
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architecture urbanism environmental issues • in the Cambridge city region
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CAMBRIDGE CONTEXTUALISM Swallows returning to Cambridge this summer might have been momentarily confused as they flew across the southern approaches to the city, wondering perhaps for a moment whether they had strayed over the neat geometricised settlement of a Dutch polder. It has been a less than obvious journey to the outcome of development proposals for the former government office buildings site in Brooklands Avenue. The original outline planning proposals for a neo-Georgian scheme under consideration by the City Council were disrupted by public intervention, and it was the developers themselves, to their credit, that responded by appointing the Bath practice of Feilden Clegg Bradley to undertake the masterplan that was subsequently implemented. Not since Eric Lyons’ Highsett in the 1960s has Cambridge seen the application of meaningful design to housing on such a scale - a major city site developed with the aplomb and distinction the situation deserved. A new form of urban environment is being created that is in the highest league of any current, qualitative residential development in this country, or on the continent; and a project that thoughtfully engages with the genius loci of Cambridge.
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LA VIE CONTEMPORAINE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Courtyard houses on the Green (overleaf) Chimneys Trinity Lane (overleaf) The Light Building Central terrace of townhouses Greenway Row house courtyards The Tower - AB architects
3 Due for completion in 2010, the first phase has reached the point where provisional assessments are possible and the end product imaginable on the ground. In this issue of the gazette we celebrate the achievement to date and endorse the earnest of intention to maintain the integrity of the scheme to completion. This is notwithstanding the vicissitudes of building surrounding projects of any longevity (including the departure of the original developer, Countryside Residential). What unfolds is a narrative of dual typologies, archetypal urban house forms played against a typology of urban form. New imperatives of sustainability and compact urban living are a further enrichment and, in this review, issues which shade a broader canvas than the local Cambridge scene. The Accordia development on the Brooklands Avenue site was made possible by the consolidation of the single storey government offices into a multi-storied complex on the south east corner of the site. The new residential scheme provides 382 units of accommodation 169 of which are 1,2,3 and 4 bed apartments and duplexes and 213 are houses in a mix of 2 to 5 bed sizes. Just under a third of the accommodation is affordable housing, much of which is included in the first phase. Several things about the development stand out. The fact of state ownership of the site and the expectation of allegiance with best practice and government planning and design guidance, coupled with the importance of the central location in the city between the Botanical Gardens and the Station, gave promise of an exemplary development; (1) promise belied by the original procurement process. The site is set in bucolic surroundings of treed avenues, the former gardens of Brooklands House, and the wooded enclosure of Hobson's Brook. The site itself has a belt of mature trees down the centre which, retained, act as an armature for the redevelopment. The density of new development is approximately 40 dwellings to the hectare, fulfilling government-set targets, with a carefully graduated scale of buildings from two+ storeys to five. The layout, divided by a central boulevard, creates distinctive sub-divisions into eastern and western sectors, which is reflected in variation of building types and heights, providing nuances of character to offset potential monotony in what otherwise is a notably homogeneous scheme. The landscaping is of a matching quality to the buildings and complementary to it. The landscape designers aptly describe the concept as a 'city in a garden'. Not a garden city - the crucial relationship of dwelling to ground is the major structuring theme of this project, against the notion of compact settlement. It is the formative key both to the development of the generic house types and their critical reception. Feilden Clegg Bradley interpreted the masterplanning role as that of engaging and orchestrating other architectural teams as well as their own in the implementation of their masterplan aims, working towards a coordinated and varied urban design scheme. The core of terraced townhouses forming the western edge of the
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central boulevard is designed by architects Maccreanor Lavington, a practice signed-up to long-life, adaptable buildings as the appropriate strategy for dealing with the (2) unpredictability of modern life. Overtones of Georgian terraces are intentional, not in an attempt to put the clock back, but drawing on and extending the principles that underpin a timeless, classic, urban vernacular of flexibility and elegance; and adapting this to modern lifestyles and patterns of habitation. One of the outstanding features of the Accordia scheme is the degree of creative coordination MLA have affected within the masterplan - not least the gracefully proportioned and detailed street elevations, imparting a sense of lasting quality to the project. In the eastern sector, and replicated in part in other sections, FCB have experimented with a courtyard pattern of housing, incorporated in urban blocks separated by a grid of alternating vehicular mews and shared pedestrian greenways. The architects conceptualise this plan form of the urban block as a 'mat', as in a patterned rug or carpet. It is a configurational idea in which the geometries and adjacencies of the plan figure are exploited to generate a diversity of compact house plans and conditions. For example, the edges of blocks facing Shaftesbury Road are of a height and semi detached, to relate to the villa context on this edge of the site (there are covenants requiring this, and in Brooklands Avenue, to safeguard the local scale). In the discussion of housing typology, questions arise over the success or otherwise of addressing the issue of orientation and solar penetration within the block format whether this has been accomplished or inhibited by design homogeneity. It is crucial to this particular endeavour, which deploys open space - not as in the pitifully small garden plots attached to most mass housing, but in the more compact urbane form of a sequence of private open terraces and balconies (remarkably) at each floor level. However, the patio sized 'courtyards' this produces at ground level begs the question of the entitling of courtyard house. The reality is more a hybrid of townhouse and apartment, something more than an apartment and less than a house. Reification if you like of a new type. The actuality of the 'city in a garden' is the compensating factor,
Mat building concept
Masterplan
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Mews style layout Semi-detached housing on Brooklands Avenue Mews at rear of "Millionaires Row" Courtyard houses facing the Green Courtyard houses 3 storey/FCB The Glass Building
Masterplanners: Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects: Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects Maccreanor Lavington Architects Alison Brooks Architects Landscape Architects: Grant Associates Client: Countryside Residential Ltd General Contractor: Kajema (First Phase)
The Corbusian 5 points: Roof gardens
Space and light
11 providing shared qualitative open space, and offsetting a degree of claustrophobia experienced within the Accordia urban block - its inhabitants trapped between a street and a hard place. Conventional city street blocks overcome this by offering an alternative larger, green view over back-to-back gardens, even in quite dense developments. The terrace of courtyard house facing out onto the former gardens of Brooklands House are blessed in this respect. Only time will tell whether this new proposition for grouping of dwellings, perhaps more redolent of shade-seeking housing in southern climates, will become a model for a new vernacular. Two sets of 4 storey apartment blocks on the one hand, and the four pairs of 4 storied semi-detached villas fronting Brooklands Avenue, flank the single vehicular access to the site. 'Millionaires' Row', the rather more sumptuous and spacious versions of townhouses, as a group manage to embody their semi-detachedness within a terrace-like frame, and to reflect the grander scale of the Avenue, the central pair of which are designed by the third of the architectural teams, Alison Brookes. The difference of design provenance from the FCB houses on either side, reinforces the impression of discrete villas. AB Architects have also designed two other distinctive, eyecatcher buildings - an apartment block under construction as part of the second phase, and a future, 6 storied apartment building, located in the central square, punctuating the development with its deliberate contrast of form and nonorthogonal design. Mercifully this approach to the introduction of variety and diversity is limited. It is a high risk strategy which, in the context of the rationality of the other development, could attract attention more for its whimsiness than as a studied response to context. The overall composition of the redeveloped Brooklands Avenue site is imbued with an air of mastery - of diversity within homogeneity, a contrapuntal organization of building and open space carefully woven into its sensitive surroundings. The landscape design is key to the unification of the layout. Landscape strategy, like the architecture and urban design, has subsumed sustainability as a sub text, sensibly insinuating itself, not flaunted as a gesture to ecopolitical correctness. Open space has been coordinated as a spectrum of public, communal and private spaces serving the variety of locational and usage requirements of the layout, with a variety of connecting promenades and paths for strolling. Within them the landscape design works hand in glove with the architecture, developed and planted with as much detailed care. It provides extension to the space of the individual house for outdoor relaxation, social interaction, barbecues, and play space for toddlers. The grid of vehicular routes is clearly defined to indicate
the character, whether distributor road, pedestrian priority, or a mews road - without signage, only visual clues. Vehicles are absorbed by the development and do not intrude visually. The pedestrian routes are more successfully accommodated to permeability and linkage to surrounding areas than the internal road system, which local planning constraints restrict to a single point of entry and egress from Brooklands Avenue. Semi-private greenways of the courtyard houses in the eastern sector act as connecting routes for residents. The principal pedestrian ways are separated from the distributor roadways and the latter link and effortlessly transpose into mews Home Zones, where small children play in the security of the behavioural conditioning of motorists effected by the hard landscape treatment. These achievements alone single out the special nature of this project. Accordia is well on its way to meeting what must be its most important achievement, that of making a satisfactory environment for living. Its generic house plans, as determinants of its urban form, successfully create an architecture of urbanism. But it leaves some residual questions concerning the content of this new urban fragment within the expanding matrix of the city. The site brief called for mixed development, countering the social weaknesses of monotype development. A zoning of pure residential uses has ensued, whereas modern lifestyles are becoming orientated towards a return to a more flexible and complex mix of living and working. Historically the best forms of urban housing grow old gracefully supporting diverse and changing patterns of occupation and use, and leave something for the tenants to finish off. In these respects it might be argued that the Accordia approach to development is generated by a tendency towards overdesigned and organized environments. A measure of the success of the development is the community building propensity of the project. Management and maintenance of the wide spectrum of open spaces within the project will incur a mixture of responsibilities some of which will bring opportunity for self-management the 'greenways' for example. It nevertheless is some way from the desirable position in which urban design strategies go hand in hand with community structures, encouraging grass roots, self-administered social programming (again the Span housing model comes to mind). One of the most striking features of this development is the application of a 'new' housing typology closely grounded in modern lifestyles and aesthetics. This new generation of modernism is more concerned with the synthesis of the experience of its avant garde antecedents, rather than the continuing search for new forms. It is suggested that the masterplanners and architects for the project have drawn on
Long section
Ground floor
First floor
Second floor
3 storey Courtyard houses/FCB
First floor plan
12 two key sources in particular in the conceptualisation of the new development and allied this with current thinking on urban design, in the layout, implemented in the brick style of contemporary Dutch architecture (Maccreanor Lavington have a Rotterdam practice in parallel with their London office) and the bold brick modelling particularly under the influence of the Cambridge architecture of Harvey Court, Gonville and Caius College. Just three of the house types, and one apartment, have been selected to illustrate the connection and to celebrate the formal and human qualities of the scheme. The important influence of the seminal text, 'Community and Privacy,' 1963 by Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander, is strongly apparent, particularly in regard to the row housing and mews terraces of Accordia. In this work a proposition is made for a relatively compact form of urban housing that provides as high a degree of personal privacy as the suburban norm, but without the sprawl. Archetypal plans (mostly single storey) from Philip Johnson (Rockefeller Guest House) to Chermayeff's own Court houses, would seem to be highly significant models for the singular courthouse patterns created for the Accordia project. The early 'heroic modernism' era of le Corbusier (19101929) produced an iconography of the spatiality of modern living. In such projects as the Villa Carthage, Maisons Citrohan and Guiette et al, can be detected precedents for the double height spaces, the roof terraces (toit jardin of the "Five Points") and small external courts on different floor levels extending the internal space, that feature so prominently in the Brooklands Avenue scheme. The FCB 3 storey terrace facing the green and MLA 4 storey row housing are exemplary reinterpretations of this spatial quality translated into the conditions of contemporary mass housing and bourgeois lifestyle aspirations. The Immeuble ClartĂŠ, Geneva (Switzerland 1930-32) with its duplex apartment spaces comes to mind when considering the two end-on apartments and the superbly understated copper and oak frame of The Glass Building. Personal experience of living in Accordia in an apartment in the Light Building has provided the opportunity to get closely acquainted with occupants of a number of the highly varied types of dwelling that make up this development, and to the highly beneficial reception on their part of this new Cambridge environment. The twin 3 storey apartment blocks fronting Brooklands Avenue form a gatehouse to the site. Poised over a plinth of residents' carparking with superb views of the village-green, the meandering reed beds of Hobson's Brook, distant vistas of the specimen trees in the University Botanical Gardens. From this vantage point it has been possible to view daily,
13 the life of the brick-paved streets, the children's activities on the communal village green (including a teenage, twilight barbecue party) the distant high-roller lifestyle of The Glass Building and the adjacent Court and Row houses. The ground-floor of the Courthouses provide space for cars and cycles and service areas for domestic trash. The ground floor also houses an indoor living area with open fireplace and a bay window overlooking the village green. The marching-order of the brick flues gives definition to the group. The first floor living-room roof terrace is heavily employed for weekend sun-worship and family lunchparties. The upper levels are also complemented by roof terraces adjacent to the main bedroom space and the luxurious en-suite bathroom. A similar configuration occurs in the 4-storey terraces aligning Aberdeen Avenue alongside. It only requires householders to acquire a plot in the nearby allotment gardens to realize the full vision of a 'vie contemporaine'. The overall site is now receiving further town houses and apartments, and even its apartment tower is likely to be realized in the final stages. It is both appropriate and exhilarating that the architecture of this project, exploiting the homogeneous brick architectural legacy redolent of the buildings of Jorn Utzon and Leslie Martin, points to the continuity of a modern tradition. Indications that this might become a benchmark for future urban housing in Cambridge would be encouraging. Relatively speaking Alvar Aalto said very little, but he did say "it is the architect's duty (in this short life on earth) to make a paradise for man." To considerable extent the architects have achieved this venerable injunction in Cambridge. For those privileged to live in this magnificent celebration of the modern, its spatiality, communality and privacy, for them the ideals of le Corbusier, Aalto and Martin have been brought together. Colen Lumley and Ivor Richards
Ground floor plan
Courtyard houses 2 storey/FCB
Studio house section
Deck house section
Third Floor
Second Floor
First Floor
Ground Floor
4 storey Row Houses/MLA
Serge Chermayeff prototype courtyard house plan
1 - "Urban Renaissance Starts in Cambridge?" Brooklands Avenue public seminar, December 2001, Cambridge Urban Forum 2 - Time Based Architecture, ed. B Leupen et al, 2005 Rotterdam
The rumpus last year over the CB1 Cambridge Station Area planning application revealed shortcomings of vision in transport policies, and particularly in their application to the detailed planning circumstances of the Station area and its associated travel facilities. The centrality of this transport hub to the planning of an effective citywide modern transport system calls for wide contextual consideration, looking at the mid and longer term needs of the City region.
Transports of delight
- a transport interchange for cambridge Integrated strategic thinking is needed which takes into account growing public desire for a comprehensive system of communication, inclusive both of private and of public modes of travel - seamless mobility. Increasing congestion with its imposition on movement and access, calls for changes of attitude and expectation, looking more favourably at public transport modes as complementary and viable alternatives rather than as replacements to private vehicles. Public transport can never cover all the exigencies of travel and the issue is one of the most efficient accommodation of all available modes to each other in relation to more effectively used public transport. The biggest barrier to the necessary kind of dynamic formulation of ideas and solutions proper to the gravity of the subject of a forward-looking urban transport system, is, in the first place, institutional, not economic. The current reliance on the private sector to fulfil central government objectives via disaggregated agency and operators, and a disempowered local authority, simply is not working. It is no more clearly evident than in local infrastructure in relation to expansion of settlements in and around Cambridge. The order of problem is on a scale worthy of special direction and implementation that includes the development of working physical models and the integration of design teams. None of the specially created governmental and regional agencies seem to have either the remit or capacity to deliver. The Station Road Area redevelopment proposal was remarkable for the thinness of its planning brief and organisation of inter-agency negotiation over the transport issues. The complexities and financial implications of issues surrounding infrastructure are immensely challenging, but endless reports, conferences and studies on transport of the future in the City, find little expression here in a practicable system to match in imagination what is happening in other parts of the UK and on the continent. The compartmented manner in which decisions are made is questionable - in the case of the introduction of supplementary transport modes to enhance public transport, the guided bus figures as the most expeditious political solution, regardless of the problem. More happily, in the case of Park and Ride, the County seems to have stumbled on a winner. Whether there is realisation of the wider significance of the systemic step-change brought about by the application of the principle of remote access linked to urban concepts of multi-centred cities, the park/ride facilities continue to go (deservedly) from strength to strength. The facility needs now to be developed to another platform of sophistication, as generator of a truly integrated component of the urban system. Long term changes to the national railway network, the development of Cambridge railway station, are now in grave danger of obstruction, within the physical constraints of the city, by short term decisions over the current redevelopment of the Station Road pinchpoint area. Background planning issues over transport and urban reconstruction loom large over the Station, and proper identification of this location as the major city transport node (facing long term radical changes of its own) ought to take precedence over individual planning permissions. In the proper order of things an integrated transport Interchange is the right adjunct to the station - not the glorified bus stance concept that is proposed. It is a project deserving in its own right of treatment, under the joint responsibility of all the prime stakeholders, including the operators of public transport, in a partnership of interests. The coordination of urban policies with journey policies is of growing importance. David Milliband admitted in a talk in Cambridge, whilst still under-secretary for the Environment, that bus deregulation and privatisation of rail were both disasters. Much of future transport policy will need to be directed at mitigating political initiatives that have not proved to be in the best public interest. The Station area redevelopment offers a prime opportunity to link the development of regional and local transport strategy with the issue of practical implementation, but it requires concrete
action to enhance and put some glamour into public transport. A Transport Interchange at the Station ought to be designed, in combination with the Park and Ride facilities and shuttle buses, to rid the historic centre of as many buses and coaches as possible, using congestion charges to priceout intrusive 'unregulated' operators. New kinds of partnerships are necessary to match travellers' requirements and to exploit new electronic technologies for communication and traffic management - integrating multi modal information. And transport authority structures will need to be changed as part of a national trend towards integrated operation - undue competitiveness is counterproductive. Transport policies have to be legitimated by a 'Citizens Charter' for transport - a more service orientated transport system for high quality door-to-door mobility. No one mode will satisfy the mobility needs of cities in the future. More extensive use of main line rail is a pretty certain mid to long term possibility. The first fast channel-link run from Paris to London, open this year, terminates at St Pancras. Logic dictates that in the future this service will extend to the north of the UK. And Cambridge is a prime route - so why not anticipate its physical effect on the track layout now? Island platform(s) will open up the east side of the tracks and combined with a bridge/tunnel link could provide secondary access to the station, easing some of the vehicular congestion. The planned growth in this region will eventually lead to reopening of the debate on rationalization of the train/metro system, the use of Light Rail Vehicles on main lines, alongside renewed questioning of the scope of the guided bus installation. One thing seems critically important (with central government support if necessary) bringing Network Rail more closely into the strategic decisions affecting the future not only of the Station, but the station forecourt (for transport and general uses) and associated developments. More intensive and modernised future use of this transport node should entail exploitation of multi-level opportunities, which could be pre-empted by premature decisions over the redesign of the forecourt. Many considerations of course affect the issue. Amongst these, intensification of the function of Park and Ride facilities - parking linked to airport coach services; 24hr access, for example. And better integration of cycling with public transport (providing capacity for bikes on rapid transit vehicles). But to return to the subject in hand - the quality of transfers at interchanges, optimisation of interchange and transfer points and the concept of a Transport Interchange. The spatial requirements of an interchange need testing by physical models which embody routing of all movements, pedestrian and vehicular in the station precincts conjoined with the main line station concourses. Facilities for travellers entail quality of life and design issues. The attractiveness of public transport systems should not be left to operators; they need coordination and support, and good understanding of the relation with their context of business and the general life-world. Modes of communication that encourage more environmentally and user-friendly forms of transport, real time information systems and facilities display boards; non-dedicated bus stances; off-vehicle ticket provision and tariff and ticketing integration; timetable coordination; door to door information; level access at boarding points. The profile of traveller facilities should be raised, where waiting spaces, ticket and information and travel services should be places of encounter, travellers waiting time put to good use, places with complementary services - cash dispensers, telephones, passport photo booths, cafes and food shops. The Station precincts, its buildings and spaces, need an infusion of high profile integrated design treatment. Developing the right mind-set for this is central to a positive evolution in public transport, to a time when it truly might be as good and exciting to travel as to arrive. Colen Lumley This article is based on studies by Cambridge Urban Forum 2006/7 for a Cambridge Transport Interchange.
A Planner’s Beef
Brian Human
In a public spirited response to the challenge of addresing the critical reception of the redevelopment of the Cattlemarket area, a senior City planner has accepted the challenge to step aside from official representation to give a distinctly personal appreciation of Cambridge Leisure Park. In this informative contribution to the discourse of the city Brian Human connects with the expressed disquiet over urban design issues. A prime issue in the talk in question was the discussion of ownership, management and civic responsibility for open space in the public domain.
Being a planner in Cambridge can be trying: one is surrounded by people who are very well informed about urban development and care passionately about the City, yet they all think they know better how to plan it and say so. Views on the Cambridge Leisure Park are a good example. It has been criticised in recent issues of CA and was condemned by Colen Lumley in his talk at Kettle’s Yard in January - I recall the phrases ‘not chic’, ‘bad architecture’, damaging and tarnishing’ and ‘negative visualisation of space’. Well, I’m a supporter of the Leisure Park and believe it deserves credit for what it is, rather than opprobrium for what it isn’t. That’s not to say that it couldn’t (and still cannot) be better. The Park has brought into productive mixed use an area that was for too long a derelict eyesore, following closure of the Cattle Market, and is a valuable regeneration of brownfield land. That is not enough in itself and it is good to see that the development meets a real need, with the cinema, restaurants, fitness club and ten-pin bowling, increasingly popular and successful. These activities reinforce the existing focus for music and performance at The Junction. The Travelodge is long overdue addition to the stock of affordable accommodation for visitors. The success of the Park as a leisure destination, during day and the evening, will be enhanced by the eventual letting of currently vacant premises. Open space is a valuable asset in an area that lacks such amenities; its animation is now increased, especially by students at Hills Road Sixth Form College. The urban design lays the foundation for what will eventually read as a connected scheme of substantial development around a well-used public space. However, this does need to be seen in the wider context. The planned redevelopment of the Marshall garage sites will complete visually the south side of the square. This will also make a strong statement at the junction of Hills Road and Cherry Hinton Road, complementing The Belvedere and The Levels and thereby helping to achieve the original vision for this area: to create a distinctive gateway to the inner city. The architecture of the Leisure Park and its adjoining development on Cherry Hinton Road is heterogeneous. The Cheffins offices and Market Rise are polite and unfussy. The east side is dominated the strong simple forms required by the cinema, bowling alley and fitness club. The hotel is the most distinctive building and has that Marmite quality of being either loved or loathed. Well, I like Marmite and I think this is a very classy design for a budget hotel. Rather than criticise it for daring to be new, for being unconventional, we should be thanking someone for ensuring that we don’t have just another boring brick box. It is a signature building, a Lynchian landmark at the gateway to the inner city. I see this as another in the line of innovative new buildings that now
reflect modernity in a cherished historic city. All of that said, the scheme has failings and I would highlight four principally about urban design. First, The Junction buildings do not effectively close the north side of the square and the space leaks away to the gaunt car park and dreary warehouse beyond. Second, the relationship between the hotel and the bridge and the critical Hills Road - Cherry Hinton junction is not properly resolved. The hotel car park should be treated as a positive piece of public realm and given the care and attention it deserves. Third, the missed opportunity to establish a direct pedestrian and cycle link to the station, something that will become even more significant when the CB1 development takes place. Fourth, the failure to implement the full landscape scheme for the square, which leaves it hard and exposed. My final concern really has little to do with either urban design or architecture, but everything to do with identity and place: there is virtually no attempt to ac kn owledge, muc h les s c elebrate, the his toric al importance of this site to the City and the surrounding area. Cambridge’s function as a market town dates back centuries and its success led to building a new Cattle Market on Cherry Hinton Road in 1886, architect Frank Waters. At its height it extended over the land now occupied by the Leisure Park and the Clifton Road industrial estate and thousands of cattle, pigs and sheep were traded each Monday. The last few head of livestock were sold at the end of 1991. The buildings and pens were all sl owly remov ed, though on the ev e of redevelopment a fine perimeter wall, two gatehouse buildings and a good set of iron gates remained. Now they have gone without trace and the last reminder of the history of the site is the pathetic naming of the Cherry Hinton Road apartments ‘Market Rise’. Yes, the Leisure Park is emblematic of the new Cambridge, but that is no excuse for comprehensively sweeping away the past. As Cambridge moves into an era of unprecedented growth those signifiers of identity and sense of place will become increasingly important. I find this the single saddest failing in the scheme because it could so easily have been avoided with thought and understanding. It is not too late for something to be done, perhaps through celebratory public art. These shortcomings not withstanding, I believe that the Leisure Park has much to commend it. If it has shortcomings these are in part due to the limitation of our planning system and leaving too much that is important to what Alain de Botton recently called ‘the short term impulses of developers’. Its successes are demonstrated by the many people who use it and through that it enhances the City. To ignore this and claim that it is damaging, tarnishing and not chic, is elitism of the worst sort. Brian Human
Brian Human
Cambridge Cattle Market
Street-life, Cambridge Leisure
CLAY FEET planning update The proposed Clay Farm development will provide up to 2,300 dwellings, a strategic open space of 54ha, accompanying provision of education facilities, community facilities, retail and related infrastructure. The application was submitted in October 2006 and is still under review by Cambridge City Council. A number of issues and comments have surfaced as a result of the consultation on the planning application over the past several months, including amongst others: the provision and location of a secondary school; the provision and location of a community centre; and the need to provide a large area of open space which provides for a range of needs, include formal and informal uses, balancing ponds, and routes and associated bridges across the open space for a new access road and guided bus service to Addenbrookes Hospital and the proposed bio-medical campus (2020). The master plan has been reviewed by the City Council, and the City Council's Design and Conservation Panel. Given the large scale of the proposal, a number of complex transport, design, land use and planning obligations matters require further discussion between various parties. The project has been twice rejected by CABE who have recommended that the designers look again at the masterplan in a more visionary light and raise the quality of the form and layout of the buildings roads and spaces. It is the City Council's intent to bring the application forward for the consideration of its Planning Committee later in 2007.
Patrick Squire Aerial view of site in West Road
WEST ROAD SHIMMY
The latest arrival on West Road is a companion building to Harvey Court, for Gonville and Caius College. Explaining the scheme Matthew Seaborn from the office of its designers, Donald Insall Associates, describes the gestation and reasoning behind the formal characteristics of the newcomer - described by Stephen Hawking, as possibly one of the best modern buildings in Cambridge. The Stephen Hawking Building on the Harvey Court site of Gonville and Caius College was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on 17th April 2007. The new building provides accommodation for 75 ensuite student rooms, eight Fellows’ sets, three teaching rooms, and student recreation and conference facilities. There is a basement car park and, adjacent to the main building, a Porter’s Lodge. The site previously occupied by an Edwardian villa is set in a garden with a number of protected specimen trees. Stephen Hawking wrote ‘A Brief History of Time’ whilst living here. The building is surrounded by internationally significant structures, include James Stirling's History Faculty Library, Norman Foster's Law Library and Leslie Martin’s Harvey Court. These factors have influenced the shaping of the Hawking Building, an unusual, sinuous structure which acknowledges its historic context and illustrious neighbours whilst respecting the 19th Century setting. The project began in the late 1980s with an architectural competition to explore designs and ideas for both the present site and the land owned by the College between Harvey Court and Sidgwick Avenue, occupied by four Victorian/ Edwardian villas. The entries included a scheme by David Lea which extended a series of courts across the whole site. The competition was won by Arup Associates, who similarly proposed a court model of development. The Arup scheme was not supported by the City Council, primarily because it required the felling of many of the significant trees on the site. The College pursued the project with Arups up to 1995, by which time the idea of a courtyard development had been dropped. By this time there was a general presumption within the Planning and Conservation Departments that the character and grain of the 19th Century townscape should be retained. Its most prominent feature was the division of land by belts of dense planting and trees around the villa plots. Whilst this pattern had largely been subsumed by the progressive development of the Sidgwick site, the City insisted on this policy for 5 West Road. The College withdrew from development until 2000, when there was sufficient support within the Fellowship to restart the process. The successful refurbishment of C R Cockrell’s Squire Law Library as a college library for Caius by the office of Donald Insall Associates, had by this time
Donald Insall
Stephen Hawking Building Roof terrace
created a strong working relationship, which led to their direct appointment to develop proposals for 5 West Road. The model of college residential accommodation has changed since the eighties - buildings are now required to function all year round, in term time as halls of residence, in vacations as hotel style accommodation supporting conferences. This has influenced the plan form which has moved away from the traditional staircase-based arrangement of college rooms as typified in the Old Courts. The central spine corridor layout adopted here allowed the building to be threaded through the centre of the site, presenting narrow frontages at each end, in the street scale of the earlier villas, avoiding the rooting zones of the trees. The height of the building complies with a Planning Department suggestion that the elevation to West Road should “appear as a narrow but bold façade, no more than three and a half/four storeys high”. In the final design three floors are provided lining with the top of Harvey Court. A fourth attic floor clad in glass and zinc is set back from the main facade. Two options for the building form were explored - a series of villas like a string of beads winding through the site, linked by clear glazed circulation cores; the other, a sinuous extrusion, followed the same route. The final scheme is a combination of the two, the clear glazed circulation cores being absorbed into the skin of the building to offset the potential for gloomy internal corridors. The curve of the building, allied with generous width, recessed bays to create movement, a combination of lighting and natural materials, result in spacious and inviting circulation throughout the whole building. The plan originated as four identical segments, linked in pairs by helical stair cores and then rotated symmetrically about a central lift core. The characteristic S shape is formed by winding the footprint of the building through existing trees. The Hawking building makes formal reference to Harvey Court through the modelling of its stonework with a narrow band over a screen of vertical slots of masonry and window, whose rhythm and strength are intended to echo that of its neighbour. The stone is locally sourced Ancaster Hard White ashlar with 3mm joints, which forms a 100mm thick self-supporting outer cladding leaf. Each stone is cut to suit the curve of the facades by computerised stone cutters, imported from Italy for the project. The building is supported by an in-situ concrete frame with dense block infill on outer walls and 200mm insulated cavities. High standard internal finishes including stone and hardwood floors and carpeting are designed for longevity. All concealed services are accessible via panels in the central corridors enabling maintenance from outside occupied rooms.
Cambridge Water Company HQ
Timothy Soar
South elevation
Timothy Soar
View of staircase
Common room Architects: Donald Insall Associates Structural Engineer: Price and Myers M&E Engineer: Fulcrum Quantity Surveyor: Henry Riley Client: Gonville and Caius College General Contractor: Haymills Ltd
R O A D
HARVEY COURT RESIDENTIAL BUILDING
W EST
At an early stage the College adopted sustainability as a key driver for the design, to be achieved through an extended design life for the building, and energy conservation. The energy strategy, developed with Fulcrum Consulting, was the result of extensive investigation throughout the design and tender stages. A system of geothermal heating/cooling, which takes advantage of air/ground temperature differences, was adopted, using 800mm steel ducts buried beneath the underground car park. The walls of the ducts are corrugated and have steel baffles to provide maximum heat exchange. These tubes were encased in concrete to reduce water penetration. Above ground, the air intake is concealed in a louvred lantern on the roof of the new porter’s lodge. All the College rooms are heated by air ducted up from basement airhandling units (AHU) which is extracted via vents in the en suite bathrooms. Heat exchangers on the AHUs recover about 80% of heat from the exhaust air in winter. Supplementary low power electric radiators can be controlled individually in each room. Matthew Seaborn
Timothy Soar
Timothy Soar
WATERSHED
PORTERS LODGE
THE STEPHEN HAWKING BUILDING GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE
LAW LIBRARY
Ground floor plan
The David Urwin Design Awards seek to recognise good building design in the city. This year’s awards were for the Best New Building and a total of 12 entries were considered. The criteria for assessing the buildings included the importance of the access to the building, and its success for the ‘user’, the context, and whether or not the building was ‘quintessentially’ Cambridge; also, the judges were looking for an element of civic pride. The winning building was the new Cambridge Water Company Headquarters on Fulbourn Road by Barber Casanova Ruffles Architects. The building combines a forwardlooking design with acknowledgement of its historical roots. The building has retained a number of original details, including the embossed rainwater hoppers and the Company’s coat of arms. It also incorporated contemporary use of sustainable features, including natural light from the two storied glazed conservatory and a stimulating roof terrace. The runner up was the Cripps Court at Magdalene College, Chesterton Road designed by Freeland Rees Roberts. This building is used both as a College and a Conference facility. The judges thought the design fulfilled the brief for both groups of users with its broad palette of high quality materials and a discreet, but streetscape-enhancing entrance. The Sports Pavilion at Perse Girls School at the end of Latham Close, also designed by Freeland Rees Roberts, was highly commended. The Pavilion, with an associated all-weather hockey pitch, is visually striking both internally and externally. The David Urwin Awards are a partnership of Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry and the Cambridge Evening News.
A CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECT William Stone Building, Peterhouse
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Colin St John Wilson died, aged 85, in May. There have been many obituaries in the national press; here we concentrate on his work in Cambridge.
Le Corbusier with Leslie Martin (centre) and Sandy (seated centre left) in Scroope Terrace extension Scroope Terrace exterior Kings’ Hostel project
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Sandy, as he was generally known, came to Cambridge to read history, play cricket and paint. He gave up history and cricket to read architecture but was really more interested in painting than anything else. No one would have been more surprised than the young artist if he had been told he would become Professor of Architecture, go on to complete one of the nation’s major public buildings, and collect a knighthood. After war service Sandy completed his architectural education at the Bartlett before joining the LCC Architect’s Department. In 1956 he returned to Cambridge as Assistant Lecturer and First Year Studio Master. Here he practised with Professor Sir Leslie Martin, and on his own account. His first completed building – a squash court – was commissioned by his old College, Corpus Christi. Built on the playing fields in Cranmer Road it features an innovative plate roof designed by his friend, engineer Frank Newby. Meanwhile, one of the first projects on which Sandy and Leslie collaborated was a hostel for King’s College at the south-west corner of the Market Place. The College went on to build a smaller scheme by Architects’ Co-Partnership but the internal terraced court of the Wilson/Martin design was to resurface in different form a few years later at Harvey Court. In 1957 Sandy began designing an extension to the Department of Architecture at Scroope Terrace, his collaborator, Alex Hardy, being mainly responsible for thermal aspects. The first event in the lecture room was a double-act by Le Corbusier and Henry Moore in 1959. Corbu, recognising Sandy’s strict application of the Modulor and rigorous use of fairfaced concrete and second-hand Cambridge bricks, declared as he entered: ‘les intentions sont claires’. Serving a hugely expanded Department the building has suffered in the process, its ‘presence’ now diminished by the recent large extension to Scroope Terrace. Concurrently, at Leslie Martin’s studio in Shelford, Sandy was collaborating with Leslie, Patrick Hodgkinson and others on work at Leicester University and the Manor Road library for Oxford University – Grade II* listed in 1993 – the reading rooms of which were to profoundly influence the British Library. The other major project was Harvey Court for Caius College. Its authorship has been the subject of contention. The truth is that, as with many fine buildings, its design development was the work of several hands. The building, which had an international impact, was also listed Grade II*.
In 1960, collaborating with ex-AA students, John Dalton and Tony Eardley, Sandy designed a series of court houses at Houghton, St Ives. Working with a local developer was not a success and only a small group of the projected houses was built. The last of the Martin studio’s Cambridge projects for which Sandy was clearly responsible was the Stone tower at Peterhouse, completed in 1962. Strongly indebted to Aalto, with more than a nod to Lou Kahn, it received praise and scorn in almost equal measures. A modest building, Grade II listed in 1993, it deserves to be better known than it is. In 1962, between teaching at Cambridge and Yale and collaborating with Martin, Sandy started to design two houses – for himself and his first wife, Muriel, and their friends, the Squires – on a site in Grantchester Road. The Wilson house also incorporated a studio for a small practice. In these two houses, Sandy explored both urban and court typologies and the balance between public and private space. Designed on a grid and meticulously detailed in exposed block, the interior spaces – in particular the doubleheight living room of the Wilson house – were widely admired, photographed and even painted. The house was Grade II listed in 2000. Sandy and Muriel left their terrace cottage in Little St Mary’s Lane and moved into their as yet uncompleted new home in 1964. The following year, the first major commissions arrived and, with them, the first staff, all former students: MJ Long, David Lea, myself and Edward Elgar. The largest commission, the mammoth Liverpool Civic Centre, was never to be realised – finally expiring nine years later. The first of the practice’s Cambridge projects to be built was Spring House, Conduit Head Lane, for the artist and academic, Christopher Cornford. Completed in 1967, this home and studio balance the client’s need for both exposure and enclosure. Entering, one becomes aware of two doubleheight spaces – the living area and the loggia – placed on a diagonal axis running from the corner hearth in the sunken living space, through the gap between the sheltering arms of the two-storey sections, and out through into the garden. The tree-like quality of the timber structure (beautifully detailed by MJ) is emphasised by light trickling through the roof trusses on the garden side and from south-light high above the hearth. This magical house was also listed Grade II in 2000. The final Cambridge project, in collaboration with Michael Brawne, with myself as job architect, was the Biochemistry Laboratory at Babraham, completed in 1971.
2&3 Grantchester Road
SHAPING CHANGE
Biochemistry Laboratory, Babraham
With a tight site and overstretched budget, this was an exercise in evolving an adaptable anatomy of space, services and structure. It achieved this only too well and the building has since been much modified. The Cor Ten cladding proved a failure and the exterior has been altered and re-clad in anodised aluminium. James Stirling once described it as ‘the first high-tech building’ – an opinion Sandy chose, wisely, to suppress! In 1970, the practice moved to London, Sandy resigning his lectureship and Fellowship of Churchill. Another huge project, the British Library, was getting under way and the organisation of the practice was changing. The days of picnics in Grantchester Meadows, of evening reviews after Sandy’s return from a day’s teaching, of allnight model-making sessions involving teams of students, and of releasing warm air paper balloons over The Backs were over. Commuting, computing consultants and a division into separate project teams was the order of the day – but it remained a stimulating work place. In 1976, following the untimely death of Bill Howell, Sandy was elected Professor and returned, as Head of Department, to Scroope Terrace, a post he held until 1989. The Department prospered: the annual exhibition was introduced; the first M Phil courses were established; and, most significantly, the outlook of the school broadened towards Europe and the world beyond. In 1983, Sandy was involved in one last Cambridge building – the extension of a small thatched cottage in Barton. The clients were Gordon and Faith Johnson – the former being the long-serving Chair of the Architecture and History of Art Faculty Board. Modest and Aaltoesque, the extension is barely detectable from the road – a model exercise in the vernacular. Sandy retired in 1989, but continued, for several years, to give the opening lectures in the First Year Theory course. He was an excellent lecturer, an inspired and tolerant studio teacher, and a most perceptive critic of both buildings and paintings. He had an engaging sense of humour and immense charm: being paid the ultimate compliment by some Dublin architects, with whom he briefly collaborated, when they referred to ‘the silver tongue of Mr Wilson’. As a teacher, author, and practitioner who brought a firm theoretical base to all his work, he was one of the most outstanding architecture professors of his time. Cambridge is home to the largest concentration of his completed buildings. Peter Carolin
2 Grantchester Road interior
Cottage in Barton
Cornford House interior and section
Shape east’s new Director, Frances Downie, has been in post for nine months. Peter Carolin met her at her Sturton Street office. Moving to Cambridge in January, Frances Downie parked her car, bought a bike and is now, after several years of freelancing in the south and north west, a city dweller. She likes it. ‘It’s a real luxury to get up in the morning knowing that you’re close by your place of work’. Except, of course, that the organisation she now directs covers not just Cambridge but the entire region. For the last few years, Downie has been preparing business plans for arts organisations and forging public art strategies for local authorities and development agencies. ‘Public art strategy is not so much about art as about the public realm – the space between buildings – and involves an immense amount of time working with planners.’ One of the attractions of shape was the ability to continue this work in an interdisciplinary context. Another was independence. ‘Not having assured funding gives one a certain freedom. You’ve got to be creative – and this enables you to meet interesting people and do interesting things, constantly responding to change.’ shape’s work in schools is certainly affected by change. Where the built environment was once used as a focus for a broader education, it is now increasingly the basis for the local ‘consultation’ which the government requires in areas of new housing. Where no community exists to consult, shape runs master-planning exercises in nearby schools – enabling future citizens to understand both issues and process and to express their views. Its ‘eco-house’, a demountable structure demonstrating sustainability principles, is proving an invaluable aid to this process – at both child and adult level. At the other end of the scale, there’s an on-going regional programme on urban design for local authority councillors and officers. Downie is impressed by the attendance at these. ‘People are staying on after work for a couple of hours instead of rushing home.’ Feed-back has been very encouraging and the programme is now expanding to issues of ‘re-cycling’ and continued……
CFCI EVENTS
Shaping Cambridge continued
new construction in historic areas. The only dissenters have tended to be architects seeking something ‘of greater depth’. Downie, both of whose parents were in the profession, says, ‘We’re living in a period of great and rapid change – forced on the design professions rather than led by them. Reading the trade press one finds architects and planners bewailing their lack of control and status, of the difficulties in meeting the challenges confronting them, of the lack of research, testing and infrastructure. We need to collaborate across the disciplines, addressing the technical challenges and changing public perceptions. shape aspires to attract and serve all the built environment disciplines, including builders and craftsmen, as well as some geographers, sociologists, economists, psychologists – all those ‘ists’ who study societies – together with some caretakers and tour guides – in short all those who might help shape achieve its charitable purpose of “helping people make better places�.’
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And who better to create that forum than shape east? ‘There’s going to be very little public money until after the Olympics – and we’ve got to get used to that,’ says Downie. ‘But there’s lots for an organisation like shape to do. The trick is to link things up and to do what others can’t. We’ve had Richard MacCormac wowing teenagers with his explanation of the design process for the Fitzwilliam Chapel, Alex de Rijke will be speaking to heads and governors of six future Fenland BSF schools and we’re planning a seminar for conservation officers and councillors using the Hopkinsdesigned Norwich cathedral refectory as a case study.’ Working with communities and councillors, developers and the design professions; free of the ‘baggage’ of larger organisations; and lacking any mystique or jargon, Downie and her five-strong team look the right people to enable the debate on the changes about to shape our future. Peter Carolin
6th November 6.30pm Colin St John Wilson Nicholas Ray will lead a number of speakers in a retrospective of Sandy’s work and life. Cripps Court, Magdalene College, Chesterton Lane 24th November 10.30am Visit to new Anglesey Abbey Visitor Centre 26th November 6.30pm Contract Disputes Colin Reece (deputy Judge of the Technology and Construction Court) Cripps Court, Magdalene College, Chesterton Lane 2nd December 5.00pm Annual Carol Concert Robinson College For details and tickets contact: secretary@cfci.org.uk website: www.cfci.org.uk
CA gazette list of current sponsors • Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry • Purcell Miller Tritton “ What is life full of fret We have no time for CA gazetteâ€? Donations please to: The Hon Treasurer c/o Wrenbridge Land Limited Mill House / Mill Court Great Shelford Cambridge CB22 5LD
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A review produced by the Cambridge Association of Architects. The views in this gazette are those of the individual contributors and not of the Association. Copy deadline for CAg 56 is 31 December 2007. The editors welcome readers’ contributions but reserve the right to edit ISSN 1361-3375 Editorial Group: David Raven co-editor Colen Lumley co-editor Jeremy Lander co-editor John Preston Peter Carolin Cambridge Architecture gazette c/o 25a Hills Road Cambridge CB2 1NW Tel 01223 366555 Fax 01223 312882 Email jl@frrarchitects.co.uk or mail@dra-architects.demon.co.uk Printed by Bulldog Publishing Ltd, Whittlesford