Cambridge Architecture Gazette CA63

CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURE

Autumn/Winter 2011

Housing and climate Local responses

63 Cambridge Association of Architects www.architecture.com/cambridgegazette

featuring: An historical perspective A house, a terrace and student accommodation The renovation of a mid-Twentieth Century masterwork Reflections on some city houses and housing over the past 50 years

THE EDITORS

NEWS

SOMETHING ABOUT US

CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTS TOP AWARDS

Architects tend to think that the Cambridge Architecture gazette is for them. It isn’t. But, in another sense, it is.

Local RIBA members form a mere 23% of our readers. The gazette is aimed at the remaining 77% – interested members of the public, local government politicians and officers, college bursars, local and national libraries and media of every description and, of course, fellow construction industry professionals. To this ‘lay’ audience, we have tried to present architecture and planning issues in an accessible way and, in so doing, to promote the interests of architects.

The gazette is not, in the conventional sense, an architecture magazine – there are more than enough of these already. Nor is it a research journal – invariably largely inaccessible to non-architects. Nor is it a promotional medium for the work of a small coterie – in the last four years, the work of over 20 practices has been featured.

It has been suggested that, in a digital age, the gazette should abandon hard copy. But to do so would destroy its ability to reach the local movers-and shakers on our mailing list – twice as many as on the architects’ list. In any case, the gazette can already be found at architecture.com/cambridgegazette Finally, the gazette is free. That’s pretty remarkable today. We are immensely grateful to all those who advertise in our pages and sponsor our issues. We also acknowledge our debt to our predecessors and to all those contributors, photographers and others who have given so generously of their time and skills.

This is the last issue we shall edit. It’s time for another team to take over. We wish them every good fortune and look forward to seeing the gazette – now in its 25th year – continue to change and develop under their editorship.

Peter Carolin Bobby Open

The very high standard of local architectural talent was recognised when buildings designed by Cambridge-based architects topped the RIBA’s Eastern Region awards and commendations for 2011.

Haysom Ward Miller’s Parinder hide complex at Titchwell in Norfolk [6] was awarded a Regional Award. Its owners, the RSPB, stated that ‘Architectural splendour has never really been one of our strengths! We wanted to do something really different with the new hide and we’re very grateful to Patrick Ward and his team.’

In the RIBA East Spirit of Ingenuity Awards, Donald Insall Associates’ Chapter house project at Jesus College [2] collected the Heritage Award. Commendations in the Home category were awarded to Bobby Open Architect with Juliet Davis for their cottage extension in Great Wilbraham [3] and to Mole Architects for a house refurbishment and extension in Cambridge [4].

In another award scheme, the annual Refurb, Rethink, Retrofit awards, 5th Studio’s upgrading of Churchill College’s late 1960s Wolfson Court [5] won both the large housing and best lower carbon building categories.

1. Barr Architects’ garage conversion

NEW ARCHITECTURE SHOP Newnham Croft is one of the few areas in the city to retain most of the facilities for easy suburban living. To add to all these, it now has an architecture shop.

Although there are other architects in the Newnham area, only Barr Architects are based in the Croft. Nathan Barr recently acquired a garage in Newnham Croft Street to give architecture a ‘shopfront’ in the area [1]. The garage has been a design studio before – Barr purchased it from an inventor who, unbeknown to passers-by, worked in gloom behind the garage door. The latter has been replaced by an elegantly simple shopfront showcasing models and the odd drawing.

2. Chapter House, Jesus College

3. Cottage extension, Great Wilbraham

Cambridge Association of Architects stalwarts Ann Bassett, February Phillips and Zoë Skelding will be editing the gazette from issue 64, due out in the summer. Contact details can be found at the foot of the masthead on the back cover.

4. House refurbishment and extension, Cambridge

5. Wolfson Court, Churchill College

The Editors designate

6. RSPB hide complex, Titchwell, Norfolk

NEW EDITORIAL TEAM

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1. South-facing living room bay window. Church Rate Corner, M.H. Baillie Scott, 1924

CAMBRIDGE CLIMATE Cambridge enjoys a benign climate – ideal for making buildings which are pleasurable to live in. Dean Hawkes provides an historical perspective on the ways architects have exploited local conditions in their house designs.

This article is followed by three contemporary examples – a private house, a city terrace and college housing.

In 1695 Trinity College moved the books into Christopher Wren’s newly completed library on the banks of the river Cam. Before beginning his life’s work as an architect Wren achieved distinction in Natural Philosophy as Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in London from 1657 until 1661, when he was elected to the chair of Astronomy at Oxford, which position he held until 1673, some ten years after his earliest architectural projects. Wren also had a great interest in meteorology and demonstrated designs for ‘Weather Clocks’ at the Royal Society.

In my book, Architecture and Climate, I explore the relationship between Wren’s science and the environmental aspects of his buildings.

The architectural historian Kerry Downes has written that, ‘Wren considered geometry to be the basis of the whole world … while light not only made that geometry visible, but also represented the gift of Reason.’ Trinity College Library [2] is the complete embodiment of these beliefs. The long axis of the plan is almost

exactly north-south and the ranges of windows in the east and west façades, high above the bookcases, fill the interior with light that is everchanging, transmitting a sense of changing nature as the days and seasons progress. In this building science becomes form.

Cambridge’s climate is one of the most benign in the British Isles. The city enjoys more sunshine than the average and warmer than average summer temperatures. The rainfall is one of the lowest in the country. In winter the temperature often falls below the national average, particularly when the north-easterly winds set in, but nonetheless this is an almost ideal climate in which to make buildings.

Arts and Crafts exemplars One of the great periods for domestic building in the city was in the early decades of the 20th century, when the Arts and Crafts movement was at its peak. All Arts and Crafts architects spoke about and practised principles of good, southerly orientation in their house designs and

M.H. Baillie Scott, one of the greatest, wrote, in his book Houses and Gardens, ‘Human life, like plant life, flourishes in sun and air and grows pale and anaemic when deprived of these.’ This belief underpinned his many designs for houses, not least those that he built in Cambridge.

48 Storey’s Way (1912) is probably the house that most comprehensively exemplifies Baillie Scott’s ideas. The street and garden fronts, the one closed and protective the other open and responsive, are strong expressions of the importance of orientation when building in the English climate. All the principal rooms face south [4], to capture and enjoy both the light and the warmth of sun, and the interior of the living room, with its sun-filled bay window and cosy ingle nook, provides comfort at all seasons [3].

This sensibility continues outside where, as Baillie Scott further declared, ‘ … the garden is conceived as an outdoor extension of the house, with its sheltered apartments for sunshine or for shade.’[5] It is hard to conceive of a house that is better adapted to the climate in which it is set.

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2. Trinity College library. Christopher Wren, 1695

3. 48 Storey’s Way, living room

4. 48 Storey’s Way, ground floor plan. M.H.Baillie Scott, 1912

After the First World War the Arts and Crafts movement was in decline as new social and architectural ideas began to emerge, but, hidden away not far from the Newnham Mill pool, Baillie Scott built one late house in which all of his environmental principles are abundantly applied; Church Rate Corner (1924)[6]. Although the approach is discreet, without the street frontage of Storey’s Way, the house is also entered from the north and all the principle rooms enjoy a southern orientation, with a large floor to ceiling bay window lighting and warming the living room[1]. A subtle, but significant hint at a change of environmental ground is the prominent castiron radiator that sits in the centre of the bay, nonetheless the house is just at ease with the climate as its predecessor.

5. 48 Storey’s Way, garden front

6. Church Rate Corner, south front. Baillie Scott, 1912

Modernist continuity ‘Light, space and air’ became a slogan of the Modern Movement in architecture. With their sliding glass walls, balconies and roof terraces Modernist houses redefined the relationship between inside and outside space and, hence, with the climate. It is often stated that this architecture was best adapted to warm climates such as those of the south of France and California. But it could be just as successful in more temperate settings.

In 1928 George Checkley, a young New Zealander, came to teach in the Department of Architecture in Cambridge and in the early 1930s built two Modernist houses in Conduit Head Road, the White House, for himself, and the Thurso House, now Willow House [7]. With their concrete frame construction and roof terraces

these exhibit the Cinque points d’une architecture nouvelle, pronounced by Le Corbusier in 1926. They are, however, subtly adapted to the English climate. The key may be found in English modernism’s reference to and continuation of the environmental principles of the Arts and Crafts. This is clearly shown by comparing the plans of Willow House [8] with Baillie Scott’s 48 Storey’s Way [4]. We find a strikingly similar disposition of the principal rooms, facing to the south, but within the horizontal configuration of Corbusian fenêtre en longueur gives a very different light from Baillie Scott’s bay windows. The ground floor rooms flow easily into the garden, but the language of Modernism offers the additional pleasure of les toits-jardins, approached via a short staircase from the master bedroom.

Self sufficiency In the early 1970s the ‘Autarkic House’ project at the Department of Architecture became an early ‘icon’ of sustainable architecture [9]. Under the direction of Alex Pike, the aim was to design a house that would be self-sufficient in energy in the Cambridge climate. This was to be achieved by capturing solar gains and wind energy and storing and transferring these from season to season. Sadly the design was never built, although a number of members of the team went on to play significant roles in the development of sustainable design research and practice. The image of the beautiful model of the house is a poignant reminder of exciting times.

I began my own research upon my arrival in Cambridge in 1965 and have over the years

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9. Autarkic House. Alex Pike, early 1970s

7. Willow House, south front. George Checkley, 1928

8. Willow House, floor plans

10. Hawkes House, floor plan. 1991.

linked research with practice. Some thirty years ago I was a member of the group that wrote the draft of The European Passive Solar Handbook, a guide to solar energy in design. This remains one of the standard references in the field. A decade later I translated theory into practice in the design of a small house in the suburbs of Cambridge. I prefer to see passive solar design as a continuation and refinement of the principles that underlie all architecture that acknowledges the influence of climate, rather than being a pretext for elaborate re-invention.

The house shares Baillie Scott’s and Checkley’s priority for a southerly orientation [10], exaggerated here by a complete absence of windows in the northern boundary wall.

Combining high thermal insulation with carefully dimensioned and oriented glazing, the house captures sunlight and warmth through the day at all seasons [11] and, with an efficient heating system and low-energy lighting, this contributes significantly in reducing annual energy consumption. The tiny sheltered garden hardly compares with Baillie Scott’s elaborate arrangements, but is sun-filled throughout the day and plays an essential part in the life of the house.

much of life transfers to the garden, under the shade of a hedgerow of ancient hawthorns. In winter the hawthorns loose their leaves and low sunlight – 15 degrees above the horizon at noon on the solstice – strikes the rear wall of the room.

This brings both welcome light and warmth when it is cold outside, enhancing feelings of shelter and wellbeing [12]. In between these seasons an almost infinite variety of conditions occur, sustaining the enjoyable inhabitation of the house.

Architecture and Climate aims to bring an awareness of history to the field of environmental, now sustainable, design in architecture. I suggest that this awareness will inform and deepen contemporary practice. The present brief survey of buildings in Cambridge perhaps indicates something of the potential of this proposition.

11. Hawkes House, capturing sunlight.

Enjoying the Cambridge climate One of the greatest pleasures of a house like this, again a quality shared with its Cambridge predecessors, even with the Wren Library, is the ever-changing light. At the latitude of Cambridge we enjoy distinct seasons, even with our unpredictable weather. On warm summer days the high interior of the living room is shady and

Illustration credits: Charlotte Wood 1, 3, 5 and 6; Bobby Open 2; Dean Hawkes 4, 7, 10, 11 and 12; Raymond McGrath 8; Unknown 9

Dean Hawkes, is an architect and academic based in Cambridge.

His book, Architecture and Climate: An Environmental History of British Architecture: 1600-2000, is published

by Routledge, London & New York, 2012.

12. Hawkes House, living room bay window

Hewitsons' development team is accomplished in delivering effective property, planning, environment and construction law expertise.

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PRIVATE HOUSE With careful design it is perfectly possible to design low energy buildings that enhance their context without boasting their environmental credentials. This one, completed in 2010 in a suburban back garden is reviewed by Mary Ann Steane.

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10 1. Garage and gatehouse, left.

Existing house, right 2. Route to house entrance 3. Kitchen view of liquid amber tree 4. Route past kitchen towards bedroom corridor 5. Bedroom corridor with window bays, right 6. Garden view past kitchen, right, towards bedroom wing and corridor window bays 7. Living room and view down corridor 8. Plan LA Liquid amber tree LR Living/family room B Bedroom S Study K Kitchen E Entrance G Garage GH Gatehouse EX Existing house 9. Location plan 10.The clients

Clients: Ian and Sue Collins Architects: Mole Architects Structural Engineers: Ramboll Services Engineers: Ramboll Quantity Surveyors: Sherriff Tiplady Associates Contractor: Cambridge Building Company Photographs by David Butler Mary Ann Steane, an architect, is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture.

Six years ago the clients for the new house in the back garden of 27 Madingley Road Cambridge commissioned Ely-based Mole Architects to design a low-energy family dwelling that would respect and enrich the suburban landscape of its location, have low embodied energy and exploit ambient energy sources in order to minimise energy consumption. The fact that the building achieves a quiet but intelligent synthesis of spatial, environmental and constructional strategies while incorporating a series of ‘green’ technologies illustrates that the eco-credentials of a building do not have to be overwhelmingly obvious.

Given its location on the western outskirts of Cambridge [9], achieving a minimal impact on the local environment was an ambition shared by the planners.

The site has many mature trees, and the architects were specifically asked to design a building which would retain and respect all of them. In the centre is a mature liquid amber whose foliage turns to vibrant reds and oranges during Autumn [3]. At the time its growth was hindered by the proximity of a cedar. After the client’s arboriculturalist proposed the removal of the cedar, the basic L-shaped form was established. Previous owners in the area had been unable to convince the planners that a development of this size was acceptable, but realising that the character and biodiversity of the site would be maintained, the planners gave the project their blessing.

A deliberately discreet architecture What is clever about this house is that its spatial ambitions cannot be distinguished from its environmental design principles. Clad externally in a mixture of timber and green ‘hedge walls’, the house is single storey and encloses a hidden south-facing garden whose foliage is a haven for wildlife and ensures privacy [6]. From beyond the southern site boundary one barely knows it is there. This is architecture which is deliberately discreet, which neither cares to be visible nor to flag its environmental agenda.

Not an object to be viewed at a distance, the house reads as a deep garden wall that has been carefully shaped to circumstance as it winds between the trees.

A linear spatial arrangement demands that an order is given to events. Here the unroofed passageway that leads from a gatehouse on Madingley Road [1] leads to the south-facing wing that houses the kitchen [2]. This first sun-filled interior has now become the hub of family life during the day [3 and 4]. Fully openable to the garden via a series of glazed doors it evidently makes seasonal change a focus of conversation, and in autumn is the ideal place from which to view the flaming foliage of the liquid amber tree at the centre of the courtyard. Beyond it, the east facing wing contains three bedrooms, and at the far end of a wide corridor [5], a capacious living room [7]. The last space in the sequence, the latter is now used as an occasional playroom by grandchildren during the day and a hearth-centred retreat at night. In this way a sequence of microclimates create an architecture which sensitively marries occupation patterns with orientation. That the living room must be peripheral is made less problematic

through the provision of a corridor whose generous window seats/beds offer connections to the garden.

The world turned inside out The character of this architecture can only be discovered on entry, and even then the building is not always what it seems. Timber walls and a timber roof appear to suggest the structure is thermally lightweight. However, the spatial strategy [8] has introduced a series of smaller thermally massive brick spaces between the larger rooms already outlined, making the whole ensemble more thermally stable. This has the added benefit of enabling the deep beams that support the roof to span between these smaller rooms. Not only does the building acquire a central spine that aids structural stability, but it accommodates the mix of smaller and larger spaces a dwelling typically requires. The smaller brick boxes give a measured rhythm to the plan by distributing a series of bathrooms, studies, utility rooms and plant rooms between or at the ends of the major living spaces.

Contrasting with the more neutral walls elsewhere it is the brightly coloured bathroom interiors that help to animate this new order of building. With their mirror-lined rooflights, the world is turned inside out by unexpected views of the surrounding trees deep inside the house, reminding us that this dwelling is a garden, this garden a dwelling.

Such a structural-contextual strategy impacts on the relationship of the building to the site in other ways too.

On the one hand, it makes it possible for the east facing wing to carry a sedum roof. On the other, pile foundations were chosen because they cause less disturbance to tree roots than strip foundations, and allow a building to overhang its piles to a degree. Space has also been found on site for a range of ‘green’ technologies: mechanical-ventilation-with-heat-recovery (MVHR); a ground source heat pump connected to an under-floor heating system; a roof-top solar collector; and a large rain-water tank of 4500 litre capacity buried below the entry pathway.

Balancing with seasonal cycles When asked what adjustments living in an eco-house have required, the owners speak of the kind of teething troubles that occur with the introduction of any new machinery. The MVHR system is a little noisy when on ‘boost’ and so they are happy they invested in additional safeguards to keep its noise to a minimum. Other systems were not always well-explained or faultlessly installed, but all these minor headaches have been resolved relatively easily. Such systems can be considered the biological processes of a building that is ‘alive’, always subtly balancing the decorum of domestic activities with the cycles of the seasons. In addition to the pleasure of reducing the energy consumption of their dwelling by three-quarters they help to ensure a way of life that profoundly but discretely exemplifies Victor Olgyay’s famous dictum that ‘architecture is at its best when it works with not against nature’.

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CITY TERRACE Hidden away in the centre of a city block, this seven year old terrace of town houses demonstrates how sound internal planning, an effective ventilation strategy and well judged fenestration can make for very ‘liveable’, well-lit homes. Diane Haigh reports.

9 1. Stair-top with sunlight through opening light 2. Floor plans a Second floor b First floor c Ground floor 3. Living/kitchen looking out to garden 4. West end of terrace with large house at end 5. Front, north elevation of typical centre terrace house 6. Rear, south elevation of small end terrace house. Note pergola 7. North elevation 8. South – north site section with Beche Road at right.

Architects: Haysom Ward Miller Structural Engineers: Andrew Firebrace Partnership CDMC: Andrew Firebrace Partnership Developer / Builder: Walker Builders Photograph credits: Diane Haigh 1 and 3; Haysom Ward Miller 4 and 5; CAg 6 Diane Haigh is an architect based in Cambridge. Until recently she was Director of design review at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.

At first sight, this modest scheme of six terrace houses now feels such a good fit that it hardly attracts attention.

The appropriateness of the design for this backland site off Beche Road in Cambridge, repays a second look.

Designed by architects Haysom Ward Miller and built in 2004 as a speculative development, the scheme uses a well understood housing type to fill a gap amongst the surrounding streets. It is surrounded by typical rows of Victorian terraced houses.

The site plan [9] is absolutely clear: the long terrace fits almost to the very edges of the site, with private gardens ranged along the sunny south side of the houses and a paved parking court on the north. This completely straightforward approach to the site planning produces a very clear organisation, which makes a generous arrival court and obvious access routes to the houses. It seems so much more successful than the cut-up spaces produced by the fragmented folksiness of the terrace developments along River Road or Riverside.

Improving the traditional plan The designer, Rowan Haysom, tells me that they were exploring the potential to improve the traditional plan of the terraced house in which access to the back garden is blocked by the accretions of kitchens and back extensions. By relocating the staircase to run across the plan [2] rather than front to back, they were able to make wide living / kitchens across the entire back of the house that open directly into the gardens [3]. These generous family spaces were really worth achieving. On the upper floor the arrangement allows for two single bedrooms again facing south. The stairs are lit from above and provide a shaft of light down through the three floors of the house [1]. All these seem to be major plus points over the traditional terrace houses which surround them.

The large expanse of glass to the south-facing ground floor family rooms is shielded by a pergola, the beams of which run north-south, providing a support for deciduous planting to provide shade in summer and allowing in low sun in winter. Any summer heat build-up on the south side of the houses is released by stack effect through the opening lights of the top-lit central stair [1].

Workable and generous These are quite large units with over 5.2m frontage and four bedrooms, but the plan suggests a really workable arrangement for up-to-date family town houses.

Generous storage areas and two bathrooms complete the picture. Perhaps the one aspect that they miss out on compared with their neighbours is a distinctive identity to each front door [4 and 5]. There was no room for even the tiny front gardens that line Beche Road and make each house feel different, despite being essentially the same.

The architect’s proposal that residents should select colours for the rendered panel by their front doors was rejected by the developer. So, too, was his design for a raised planting bed along each frontage.

Unlike the surrounding streets of rows of repeating units, Haysom Ward Miller decided to express these six houses as one block. Early elevation studies illustrate their concept of a top floor set-back for four of the houses balanced by a higher roof on no.6. As realised, the terrace reads as a homogenous whole, almost a single building in a creamy brick. Whilst quite successful here, this can tend to subsume any differentiation of individual houses and their entrances into one large block.

Unlike this scheme, this approach leads to the kind of inflated megablocks of apartment units that are replacing the suburban houses along outer city roads such as Queen Edith’s Way. They sprout excrescences that try to make them contextual – elaborate gables, dormers, balconies, turrets and terraces, without any of the fundamental organisational clarity that relates the building to the street or to its neighbours. Once through the security gates, even finding the front door can be a puzzle.

And they certainly don’t relate to the scale or pattern of the adjacent development, despite the bolt-on features.

Low turnover of residents Looking at the Beche Road scheme some years after it has been completed brings the opportunity to talk to residents about their experience of living there. Beche Court receives high approval ratings. The houses have held their value – and have been valued as homes, as is clear from the low turnover. Only one unit is currently lived in by a family with children, so other residents enjoy the luxury of having the spare bedrooms as studies etc.

The south-facing gardens with built-in patios and pergola [6] are very much appreciated and extend the living space outdoors. Other features such as the third floor terraces from the top bedrooms have proved less useful [2a]. The robust finishes are weathering well. Shared issues are resolved by a management company, in which each home owner is a director. This seems to run smoothly and results in a very well maintained environment.

When it was submitted for planning in 2004, Beche Court was considered dangerously modern. Style was an issue for the Planning Committee, although they have since cited it as a good example of integration of modern housing in traditional areas. It was so refreshing to hear one of the original residents say that she bought her home precisely because it was a modern design. Having compared it with other contemporary schemes, she chose this one. She has really enjoyed the thoughtful planning, great light from the larger windows, the nononsense detailing.

Do developers value practicality?

Why do developers still imagine that no-one wants to live in contemporary homes? By combining this straightforwardly modern approach with a form that respects the older city streets around it, this scheme has created highly practical and enjoyable homes. This is an approach to foster.

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COLLEGE HOUSING Many modernist buildings utilize built forms that could be sited almost anywhere – others are site specific, responding closely to the local context and climate. Clare Hall’s latest building is placed firmly in this latter tradition by Ranald Lawrence.

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11 1. View from approach road 2. West elevation facing court 3. Student room with protruding windows …

4. … seen from outside (as in 2) 5. Generous atrium space eliminates gloom 6. Elegantly detailed open-tread stairs 7. Ground floor plan. Room in 11 at lower right 8. First floor. Student rooms, left, and flats, right 9. Section showing natural ventilation system 10.West Court site plan. New building in red 11.Shared kitchen/dining space Client: Clare Hall Architects: Cowper Griffith Architects Structural Engineers: Ramboll UK Services Engineers: Max Fordham LLP Landscape Architects: Liz Lake Associates Quantity Surveyors: Gardiner and Theobald Clerk of Works: Andrew Merrick Contractor: Kier Marriott Photographs by Peter Cook Ranald Lawrence is a research student in the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture, studying the impact of environmental considerations on the design of late C 19 art schools. He is editor of the Department’s journal, Scroope.

What is so refreshing about Cowper Griffith Architects’ new Salje Building for Clare Hall is how rooted it is to its location [10]. Rising above the trees at the end of Herschel Road, three zinc-clad cowls reminiscent of an East-Anglian oast house mark its location to the east of the original 1970s Rothschild family villa. It completes a new three-sided courtyard facing north onto Herschel Road, following in the footsteps of Nicholas Ray Associates (now NRAP Architects) who extended Ralph Erskine’s masterplan and designed the Paul Mellon Building – framing West Court – as an extension to the Rothschild villa.

Erskine was one of the earliest twentieth century architects to tackle this issue of climate in modern architecture. His experience of the long harsh winters in Sweden, where he worked, led him to design the megastructure-type Byker Wall in Newcastle to take full advantage of its south orientation, looking out over the Tyne, to create a high-density social housing scheme with a sense of community akin to a small town, with outdoor furnishing and covered walkways creating flexible transitional spaces that promote psychological adaptation and allow for people to inhabit their space according to their own individual preferences. His design for the newly formed Clare Hall, completed in 1969, created an artificial south-facing hillside above a sunken car park, allowing the village-like composition to be permeated with small courtyards and break-out spaces animated by the path of the sun.

Light, airy and well-ventilated The new building contains thirteen en-suite graduate rooms and five flats for visiting academics, as well as a common room. The student rooms face west [2], while the flats and common room face east [1]. The two sections are divided by an airy atrium space [5] that also serves to skew the eastern portion to address the view over Bin Brook. The building is named after former college president Eckhard Salje, who raised funds for the ‘International Study and Research Centre’ in the Far East, and insisted on a light and airy feel to the circulation space rather than gloomy corridors. Research has suggested that people prefer a physical environment where they have a choice of warmer and cooler, brighter and darker spaces to be in, and will have a higher tolerance of daily and seasonal temperature variations if they are provided with opportunities to adapt to their environment, which includes transitional spaces to the outside, which can also provide opportunities for people to meet.

One consequence of this admirable intention is that the bedrooms and flats are necessarily rather compact [3], but another is that the atrium has been used as the driving force for a natural ventilation strategy – acting as a buffer space between the more controlled environments of the individual rooms and the outside [9]. The vents in the cowls at the top of the atrium and a window at the bottom open up automatically when it gets too hot. The

bedrooms have opening windows [3] and trickle vents with controllable grilles above the doors, connected to the atrium so that air is drawn through and over the exposed concrete soffits (providing thermal mass to balance out day and night time temperatures).

An awkward site There are, however, one or two compromises. The first problem this building had to deal with was its awkward site. It could have ranged itself along the front of Herschel Road, creating more enclosed and private spaces orientated towards the south (in the manner of Erskine’s masterful composition), but the solution was largely dictated by the stringent requirements set down by the planning authorities that the building had to be entirely contained within a waterproof concrete bund, so as in no way to possibly contaminate the ground or stream nearby. This frankly overprotective approach to the site dictated a smaller footprint, so there was no option but to build a compact building three storeys high.

The orientation to the east and west raised opportunities and challenges – one delightful feature is the protruding windows to the bedrooms that catch the south light and animate the interior [4] – a more unfortunate consequence is the location of the main entrance. The flood protection strategy dictated that the new courtyard (elegantly landscaped by Liz Lake Associates) had to be protected by a raised concrete parapet along Herschel Road. A long ramp with Aaltoesque steps staggers up from the courtyard to the allglass front door of the building (next to the road), but access to the courtyard itself is only gained circuitously through the Paul Mellon Building or around the south side of the new building (where there is a secondary door for resident access but no buzzers for visitors). On the inside, the movement sensors that control the lights in the atrium are not set to distinguish between night and day, so that the daylighting of the space is rather spoilt by white fluorescent lights. The exposed concrete ceilings and white plaster walls make for a stylish if slightly clinical interior [3].

A worthy addition These are, however, minor quibbles, and on the whole the Salje Building is a great success; a worthy addition to the Clare Hall ensemble, and a timely reminder of the potential of modern architecture not to mimic the local vernacular, but to respond to the local environment by building upon it; not denying modern materials and technology but applying it authentically, recognising the continuity of regional places and characteristics. As the critic Kenneth Frampton has observed: ‘The worst enemy of modern architecture is the idea of space considered solely in terms of its economic and technical exigencies indifferent to the ideas of the site… Through the concept of the site and the principle of settlement, the environment becomes (on the contrary) the essence of architectural production.’

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1. Before renewal – note concrete slabs

2. Perspectival section by Patrick Hodgkinson

3. Renovated court seen from first terrace. Note brick paving, new guard rails and dining room rooflight

RADICAL RENEWAL In 1962 Caius College’s Harvey Court attracted international interest. In the years since, there have been recurring technical problems. Nicholas Ray reviews its recent £10 million comprehensive renovation.

4. 1962 site plan – possible second court in broken line

5. David Lea’s 1992 competition scheme

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‘Some buildings are more important for the idea that they represent than for the particular solution that the architect provides for the client’s requirements’ – were the opening words of a brief section on Harvey Court in my book, Cambridge Architecture: a concise guide, first published in 1994. The strengths and weaknesses of the original building derive from the fact that it seems to have been conceived as an illustration of Leslie Martin’s theories of perimeter development and the stepped section, on a site where a compressed urban court was an inappropriate solution. But there is no denying its sculptural power: few buildings make such an authoritative statement as to the difference between an impenetrable exterior crust and an open interior, in a generic courtyard form [2].

And, as the critic Kenneth Frampton put it, Harvey Court is a prime example of that ‘normative, yet unequivocally modern brick architecture for the British Isles’ that Martin was engaging in establishing’. Yet, as the co-architect with Leslie Martin for the project, Patrick Hodgkinson, has explained, Harvey Court (196062) pre-dated Martin’s founding of the Centre for Land Use and Built Form (now the Martin Centre) by half a dozen years, and so, as is often the case, practice anticipated theory.

Site planning saga Martin intended the building to be capable of expanding as a second phase, and illustrated this, by creating a west-facing court [4]. Such an

expansion strategy took account neither of the adjacent nineteenth-century building, however, nor of the positions of trees in the garden. In the 1990’s, when Gonville and Caius felt they were in a position to expand their hostel, they commissioned Nicholas Hare Architects to prepare a feasibility study, and that provided the brief for a limited competition. The most imaginative but extravagant solution was David Lea’s, translating the geometrical order of the original building into a rhythm of brick arcades that linked the nineteenth and twentieth-century buildings on the site [5]. But memories are short, and in 2006, when Caius finally decided to build, Hare’s feasibility study and the projects by Lea, Terry Farrell and Arup Associates (who had been commissioned to develop their proposal further as a masterplan) were all apparently forgotten, and Donald Insall were appointed to build a new block, to the west of Harvey Court. The stonefaced Stephen Hawking building demolished an Edwardian villa, respected the trees by weaving through them, but ignored the 1960’s building.

Between the new building and Harvey Court Insalls had created a two-storey Porter’s Lodge, and the college wanted this to serve both hostels, when in 2008 they composed a brief for the re-furbishment of Harvey Court itself, which had been listed by then at grade II*. Creating a new entrance within the impenetrable rear of the building, opposite the original entrance, became the most complex architectural problem. Levitt Bernstein were brought in, following earlier

6. Renovated first floor room

proposals by Bidwells, partly because of David Levitt’s relationship with Patrick Hodgkinson: they had re-furbished Hodgkinson’s Brunswick Centre in London.

Re-ordering and renovation There had already been some repairs to Harvey Court in the early 1990’s, which involved repaving the central courtyard, to its detriment, in concrete slabs, thus diluting the powerful effect of the form as an apparently solid mass of brick that has been carved away to create the court.

And for conference use the college had created a large kitchen adjacent to the central top-lit dining room, which could be entered from the west. The new entrance for the inhabitants of the building occurs at the north-west corner, now the most convenient location, but hardly announcing itself [7]. The previous monumental entrance, up to the court, from which doors lead into the main surrounding gallery, has been preserved but only comes into its own when it is used for access to the bar in the evenings [8].

The College’s major concern was to deal with the continuing water penetration. Both the court and the terraces were stripped back to the structural slabs and a new combination of waterproofing and insulation layers laid over them and surfaced with brick paviors. The low parapet walls to the terraces were also dismantled and new damp-proofing installed before reconstruction, using the original coping bricks. New servicing has been installed throughout; there are solar thermal tubes on the roof [9]; a mechanical fresh air system has been introduced with passive ventilation to the bathrooms; and the fire performance of the building has been enhanced. In the rooms, ensuite shower rooms have been added – the depth of most of the rooms allowing this to occur without changing their proportions for the worse.

7. Discreet new entrance at North-west corner

And the bespoke sliding single-glazed timber doors have been replaced by a double-glazed version, made up by joiners to the architects’ details [6].

The trickle vents, no longer required under Building Regulations, have been blocked, where they might have been replaced by a hit and miss arrangement which would enable a rather more discreet night ventilation than by opening the whole sliding panel. But the windows do sit, as the original ones did, in a recess behind the brickwork, which ensures that, as in a Georgian sash, the bulk of the frame is not visible from outside.

The lead-covered copper roof has been replaced by terne-coated stainless steel. Along the inside of the (re-built) low parapets a bronze balustrade has been added, with slender supports above the parapet line, but rather bulky fixings when seen from the rooms [6]. The dining room, with a new rooflight [3], has now something of the character of an art gallery.

Commendable generosity In sum, given the unfortunate reversal of the point of entry, which was not in the architects’ control, the building has been treated with commendable respect. For the visiting architect, the powerful organizational and sculptural integrity of the building has survived intact; the austere (and absurdly generous) perimeter galleries remain a space in which to contemplate the virtues of this period of British Modernism.

There is no denying, however, that this subculture of admirers is a small one, which makes the generosity of Caius College in repairing the building to the standard it deserves all the more commendable.

Nicholas Ray is a Director of NRAP Architects, Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College

8. Original entrance – common room access lower left

9. Court level view. Note solar tubes on roof Illustration credits: Tom Greaves 1; Leslie Martin in association with Colin St John Wilson 2 and 4; David Lea 5; Clive Smith 6; Tim Crocker 7 – 9 Client: Gonville and Caius College Architects: Levitt Bernstein Project Managers: Davis Langdon Structural Engineers: Bidwells Services Engineers: KJ Tait CDMC: Bidwells Quantity Surveyors: Henry Riley Planning Consultancy: Beacon Planning Main Contractor: Kier Marriott

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HOUSING AND THE CITY As well as the highly regarded Stirling Prize-winning Accordia development, Cambridge is home to some of the most interesting houses and housing built in the UK over the last 50 years. Bobby Open went in search of these hidden gems and examines how our urban environment relates to the places where we live.

Good housing consists of good open spaces as much as the buildings themselves. In this respect, Cambridge historically excels. The city centre consists of networks of well-scaled streets, with housing above shops and offices.

The Colleges are characterised by accommodation set around and accessed from outdoor courtyards, a pattern repeated in some of the city’s most successful public green spaces such as Parker’s Piece and New Square.

Pleasant residential streets are lined with terraced houses.

As Cambridge has spread, its open spaces have developed a looser fit, with housing to match. Terraces have split into semis, semis into detached houses. At its Edwardian and Modernist best, Cambridge has 20th century streets to match most other UK cities, most visible in West Cambridge and the roads off Hills Road and Trumpington Road.

Over the past 50 years, Cambridge has been host to a number of residential developments that have reinterpreted these precedents and, in some cases, turned them on their heads. Four examples are discussed here: the Kennard House, Echenique House, Accordia and Blue Boar Court. When looking at these buildings, it is important to consider one other common aspect: the impact of the car.

Garden Grab Houses Marcial Echenique’s house, and the Kennard House by Erik Christian Sorensen, are great examples of ‘garden-grabbing’, both built on land purchased from adjacent Victorian or Edwardian houses. Olga Kennard’s house on Hills Avenue (1961) [1 and 2] is an exquisite example of Scandinavian Modernism transplanted into southern Cambridge. While the surrounding houses compete on how many roof planes and materials they can fit into any one square metre, the Kennard House satisfies itself by calmly defining space with white painted brick wall planes working around a delicate dark stained timber frame grid. Less is more indeed. Large expanses of glass are contrasted with small carefully positioned square openings in the walls.

The windows look out onto four private courtyard gardens with differing characters.

From the pavement, one passes through a white painted brick wall into a zen-like entrance courtyard that feels like another world.

Elsewhere on the street, car parking is celebrated in large graveled or paved turning circles in front of houses plopped in the middle of the plot; here, a carport houses the car directly off the pavement, adjacent to the entrance courtyard, but very much secondary. The house itself is carefully positioned and configured in a

single-storey U-shaped plan, defining a hard paved central dining terrace, a long and thin light-well to the eastern side, and a southern lawn with mature trees. This strategy ensures varied daylight throughout the house, from north, south, east and west, supplemented by numerous rooflights.

The Echenique House on Chesterton Road (1972) [3 and 4] shares The Kennard House’s pared-down timber frame structure. Here, smaller spaces are grouped around the main double height living room, each space enriched by the constantly shifting views within and outwards, and by variations in openness, enclosure and scale. The frame is infilled with solid panels or glass, and often with bookshelves, lending the house a variety and intensity in use. Nestled amongst monolithic masonry neighbours, the house touches the ground lightly. The environmental strategy is very simple: car parking is dealt with in the integral carport on the northern elevation, which otherwise has few openings; in contrast, the house opens up and embraces the south facing rear garden, with dense deciduous tree planting providing solar shading to the extensive glazing.

Alongside this small-scale considered densification are larger-scale ad hoc incremental changes to the urban fabric of the city. The

3. Echenique house, south side

4. Echenique house, ground and first floor plans

1. Kennard House, living room

2. Kennard House, plan

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5. Blue Boar Court, Trinity College, aerial perspective (Trinity Street in foreground)

context of the Echenique House is an interesting example, located on a curious cul-de-sac created when Elizabeth Way sliced the eastern end of Chesterton Road into little pieces. It’s a phenomenon that has been repeated across the city. What were once networks of streets of houses have become fragmented dead-ends and one-way systems. Of course, Cambridge being a city of cyclists, it can just about get away with it: permeability to a driver is not the same as it is to a cyclist or pedestrian. But the city shouldn’t become complacent. Legibility and freedom of movement are essential parts of our understanding of a city.

Cul de sacs and city blocks The celebrated Accordia development on Brooklands Avenue (2004 - 7) [6 and 7] is one of the more recent additions to the evolving and elaborate Cambridge cul-de-sac typology.

Skillfully planned by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios to take into account the existing landscape and mature trees – in turn referencing and cleverly reinterpreting College courtyards, Victorian terraces, and Edwardian villas – the houses and flats by FCBS, Alison Brooks and MacCreanor Lavington take pleasure in space, materials and detailing. Something as apparently simple as brick selection has become a source of constant variation. Whilst the houses and flats are dual-accessed from spacious shared pedestrian gardens and vehicular mews, private courtyards and terraces create complex threedimensional internal and external jigsaws of living space. One can imagine these buildings developing over time, with shops or offices appearing here and there. Cars are handled in creative ways: gabion walls of caged rocks screen secure car parks at the bottoms of blocks of flats, and ground floor space within the house plans is given over to garages and carports.

Within all of this creativity, however, is a slight sense of unease. The requisite affordable housing has been located towards the rear of the site and, with the only vehicular access point being from Brooklands Avenue, its residents are constantly reminded of the rather large villas that line the entrance to the development. Further back in the site, the timber boarding that has been allowed to weather naturally to a silvery colour has now been stained various shades of brown, balconies are chunkier than their markethousing counterparts, and car parking is confined to vague left-over spaces. Most of all, though, one has to question the single point of access to such a large development, especially with the potential for knitting into Shaftesbury Road, which runs down the eastern edge. Given that street and block layouts are the most enduring aspects of our cities, this is a curious decision.

Restricted vehicular access to the historic city centre has mainly limited the residential portions of the city’s mixed-use urban blocks to student accommodation. A dramatic example is Blue Boar Court at Trinity College by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard and Wright (1989) [5]. The entire centre of an urban block was redeveloped to create a raised College courtyard, with smaller courtyard spaces serving student accommodation located in the historic perimeter buildings above ground floor shops.

Remarkably, the shops – which extend beneath the entire urban block – remained in use during construction. One way of achieving this was to change to a lighter-weight timber frame structure for the Winstanley Lecture Hall, located directly above Sainsbury’s.

Unique and specific to Cambridge We must keep in sight those aspects that add to the uniqueness of Cambridge, including the quality of its buildings and open spaces. In the

6. Town housing, Accordia

7. Accordia, site plan

four examples cited here, the designers have helped to create unique and specific places in tune with the developing morphology of the city.

Bobby Open, co-editor of this gazette, practices and teaches architecture and urban design in Cambridge.

Illustration credits: Architectural Review 1 and 2; Marcial Echenique 3 and 4; MJP Architects 5; Author 6; Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios 7

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Cover: Salje building, Clare Hall by Cowper Griffith Architects.

Photograph by Peter Cook.

Cover design by Bobby Open.

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RIBA Cambridge Architecture gazette is a review produced by the Cambridge Association of Architects, the local chapter of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

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Back issues from no. 51 (winter/spring 2006) may be found at www.architecture.com/cambridgegaztte ISSN 1361-3375 This issue edited by Peter Carolin Bobby Open Fundraising Marie Luise Critchley-Waring CAg mailing list admin RIBA East CAg team Editorial Board Richard Owers Adam Peavoy Peter Carolin Bobby Open For editors of the next issue see p.2 Cambridge Architecture gazette ZoĂŤ Skelding c/o Purcell Miller Tritton LLP Building 7a The Michael Young Centre Purbeck Road Cambridge CB2 8QL riba.caa@googlemail.com Produced by CB Creative Ltd www.cb2creative.com