The College and Campus

THE COLLEGE AND CAMPUS BENJAMIN

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CARTER

A Competition for a New College Overview The Courts Photographic Survey Appendix 1: Archival Material Appendix 2: Sketchbook

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THE COURTS AT CHURCHILL C O L L E G E CAMBRIDGE

THE COLLEGE AND CAMPUS The Courts at Churchill College, Cambridge

Benjamin Carter

MPhil Architecture and Urban Design CDRS Cambridge Design Research Studio

Frontispiece Back cover Overleaf

Approach axis: the gatehouse and porter’s lodge Three courts at Churchill College The modern and the historic, Churchill College and the central agglomeration of Cambridge colleges

The College and Campus

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A COMPETITION FOR A NEW COLLEGE A mile west of Cambridge along Madingley Road, away from the agglomeration of historic colleges which form the nucleus of Cambridge city centre, one encounters Churchill College. A brick bastion guarding the approach to the city, Churchill, along with a handful of other post-war modern colleges to the west, shifts the collegiate centre, and architectural language of the Cambridge college, to new territories.

Initially conceived by Winston Churchill and his aides as an autonomous institution for postgraduates in the field of science and engineering along the same model as MIT, their plan failed to gain traction as a standalone university. Instead an alternative plan developed from the combination of Churchill’s institute with an industry-led drive for uptake in scientific training, and it was proposed that a new college within the University of Cambridge be established, the first in 80 years. The announcement of the college came in 1958 along with an appeal for funding which attracted donations to the sum of £3.5 million (£75 million today), with notable industrialist benefactors from across the globe1. A gently rising site, the largest of any college, was purchased at the western fringe of Cambridge, relatively level and roughly rectangular, this site was to be the location for an architectural competition to design the new college.

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The Courts at Churchill College

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In line with the the national post-war demand for scientific training, the academic focus of the college was to remain in the education of a large body of students in primarily technical disciplines.

The college was to house an academic community of 600, comprising 540 students and 60 fellows, the student population was to be all-male, but provision was to be made for coupled postgraduates on-site, a novelty for a Cambridge college2.

The competition for the first new build Cambridge college of the Twentieth Century took the form of a two-stage limited competition of invited participants. Initially twenty practices were invited to submit proposals to a jury consisting of Lord Holford, Sir Leslie Martin, and Sir Basil Spence, alongside members of the college’s academic community, these twenty would be later narrowed down to four finalists. Retrospectively, the competition is considered as the event that allowed nascent modernism to breach the domain of British university architecture, yet whilst the competition brief points to collegiate archetypes and antecedent and the idea of the college remained conservative, the reasons why the competition to design Churchill College were architecturally radical are twofold.

Firstly, the longlist of invited architects was unequivocal in the advocacy of modernist architecture, all the invited practices; from Alison and Peter Smithson, to Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, to Howell, Killick, Partridge, and the ultimate winner Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners were part of the modern movement whose presence in the realm of university architecture thus far had been underrepresented. The competition, in its total espousal of modernist architects, marked a damascene moment in the acceptance of the the movement, not just in the architecturally conservative setting of collegiate Cambridge, but in England as a whole, which had been reluctant to adopt the ideas of the International Style.

Secondly, the competition further distanced itself from Cambridge tradition in the proposal for a masterplan for the site. Historically, the episodic expansion of the college courts took place when the need arose and developed over hundreds of years, the competition provided the opportunity to realise a substantial institution from new 8

The Courts at Churchill College

aligned to the singular vision of an individual architect. The opportunity for modernist architects to realise a total academic environment adhering to a single concept was, in Cambridge at least, unprecedented: the competition had given the modern movement a foothold in the one of the world’s oldest universities.

Insofar as the architectural discipline was concerned, the competition was a radical shift towards an endorsement of modernism, yet, for all its aesthetic progressivism, the brief posed little challenge to the existing practices engrained in college tradition dating back hundreds of years.

Whilst competitors had some licence to detach their proposals from traditional college typologies and indeed many did - the conception of what the college should represent, and the concomitant social configurations, remained resolutely orthodox. A tension between the progressive architectural qualities of the brief, and the unchallenged social practices of the Cambridge college, whilst circumvented by some competitors, were still inscribed as part of the new college’s modus operandi.

The brief’s Janus-faced orientation, with one foot in the past and one toward the future, was nevertheless overcome by the generation of architects dedicated to furthering the cause of modern architecture and its intrinsic social configurations. Not all competitors followed the brief’s cues for archetypal Cambridge typologies of the court and staircase access, instead latching onto the stipulation that the college should be ‘designed as buildings for their own time’3.

Consequently, some submissions from the longlist featured point towers, mid-rise linear blocks, elevator access and hotel style accommodation, all typologies alien to Cambridge, and beyond that which the assessors were willing to entertain.

Ultimately, the list was narrowed down to a shortlist of four; Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners’ concatenation of rectangular courts were joined by the heavily chiselled forms of Howell, Killick, Partridge, the minor-in-major court solution of Stirling and Gowan, and the civic collegiate proposal to unite Churchill with two neighbouring colleges

by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the latter revealing ‘virtually no difference between a university plan 9

The College and Campus

and a city plan’4. The shortlisted designs vary in response to the brief and landscape, with extreme rifts opening between the integrated solution of Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s shared urban precinct beyond the college’s boundary and the introverted curtain-wall fortress of Stirling and Gowan. Further differences can be ascertained between the organic two-court solution of Howell, Killick and Partridge creating loosely hexagonal courts, a motif then modelled on the highly articulated facades, vis-ávis the serried ranges of 20 strictly rectangular small courts assembled around the zoned ceremonial functions of the college and set within one large court. The latter, the most restrained entry, by Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners was announced as the winner of the competition.

Allied to conservative notions of collegiate life, the winning proposal did little to challenge the pre-established social dimension of college life, arranging accommodation around a horseshoe of interlocking courts, which formed the perimeter of a largely hermetic ensemble. The residential courts in turn surrounded a large central court, in which the primary functions of the college are dispersed, in a break with tradition, which dictates that ceremonial functions (such as the college chapel, hall, lodges etc) and accommodation are integrated. The zoning of programmes produced a dualistic architectural expression and kept the residential components of the college at arms length from the ceremonial.

Over time, as the scheme developed and budgetary constraints limited the scope of the project, the number of courts was halved, rotating the orientation of the horseshoe and opening the college up to the grounds. However, whilst the expression of the primary functions developed to sympathise with the language of the residential courts, they remained isolated in plan allowing the landscape to flood the gaps between, with the effect that the plan as-built is better defined as a campus plan, than as a college plan.

Notwithstanding the perpetuation of the conservative qualities of collegiate life, and the more restrained architectural language of the chosen entry, the college as-built represented a pivotal moment in the development of modernism, and its acceptance into the establishment of university design. Many unsuccessful entrants who, prior to Churchill, had never designed 10

The Courts at Churchill College

a university building before rode the wave of postwar university construction and built nationwide. As for Churchill itself, it represented a passing of the baton to a new branch of the modern movement, Nikolaus Pevsner himself reflected on the ‘existence today of a new style, successor to my International Modern style of the 1930s, a post-modern style’, which today might be termed New Brutalism5. With that shift in style came a shift in values, the centrality of rationalism and the belief in universal validity in modernism segued into a resurgence of humanist values, and the privileging of the individual in society.

Mark Goldie, ‘Origins’, (2014), <https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/about/ history-churchill/origins/> [accessed 02 November 2020] 1

Philip Booth, and Nicholas Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture, 3rd edn (London: Leonard Hill, 1970) p. 133.

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Mark Goldie, in Corbusier comes to Cambridge: post-war architecture and the competition to build Churchill College, (Cambridge: Churchill College, 2007) p. 6.

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Stefan Muthesius, in The Postwar University: Utopianist Campus and College, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000) p. 66.

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Mark Crinson and Clare Zimmerman, in Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern: Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond, Studies in British Art 21 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010) p.133.

Pevsner’s post-modern is not postmodernism avant la lettre, but corresponds loosely to New Brutalism 5

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Left: Diagrammatic plan of an early scheme with the 20 court solution totally enclosing the freestanding ceremonial functions.

Right: Plan as built, with half the number of courts realised

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Site plan of Churchill College, not to scale.

The gradation of the site from the east, a highly conceptual landscape of courts, bleeds into the terraced lawns for sport and recreation, culminating in the picturesque setting of the chapel at highest point of the site to the west.

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The Chapel Sheppard Flats Residential courts Wolfson Hall + library Central court Dining Hall Internal parade, or ‘spine’ Master’s lodge Porter’s lodge Storey’s Way forecourt

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OVERVIEW Schematically, the built form of Churchill College resembles three clusters of quadrangular blocks linked around a central court. The arrangement of the courts locks to a grid planning apparatus, each cluster of three or four courts are themselves aggregated around three corners of an implicit square, placing them at the perimeter of the wider college plan. This has the effect of doubling-up the residential courts in the guise of the typical boundary wall which surrounds the historic colleges of Cambridge. Within the centre of the plan, as defined by the residential courts, the primary functions are scattered in the open â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the main court; the main ceremonial parts of the college, such as the dining hall, library, lecture theatre and student common rooms, are isolated within their own discrete buildings separate from the residential accommodation, a move divergent from traditional college layout. Most at odds with tradition is the location of the chapel at the western edge of the site, adjacent to the distinctive plan of the couples accommodation but far from the college proper at the top of Madingley rise.

Perhaps the most salient feature yet to be mentioned is the extensive landscape, the manicured plot comprising of former agricultural land on which the college was built, since terraced into level sports fields. The vast expanse of lawn cascades gently from the western edge of the site furthest from the college and sweeps through the college courts, flooding the open space between the court-clusters and the freestanding ceremonial buildings. The quasirectilinear regularity of the plot sets it apart from the historic colleges embedded in the city fabric, whose irregular plots and periodic land acquisition over time had resulted in a truly urban web of intersecting courts of varied scale, character and epoch. In spite of its apparent lack of natural features, the scheme makes good use of the landscape, in creating a subtle gradation of character from east to west, from a picturesque wilderness offering a outlook over the full college site, to the more controlled scenographic and intimate landscape of the college courts.

The positioning of sculpture and architectural moments within the college grounds, against the foil of mature planting, punctuates the experience of the landscape with small satellites of the college itself, always re-orienting one to the college centre.

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plan of the courts at ground level as is today. Three clusters of courts circumscribe a more amorphous central court, in which the ceremonial functions of the college are located.

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THE COURTS

The following study of the final built form of Churchill College addresses the space of the collegiate campus in architectural terms, with a focus on the structuring of the residential courts and the patterns of human associations which they engender. The study privileges the experience of the student within the courts, excluding the ceremonial buildings of the college, which themselves are discrete elements in the college plan and subject to different social parameters.

The Courts at Churchill College

Returning to the nucleus of the college, at the eastern range of the site, and the realm of courts and set-piece buildings within the landscape, we move through the college as one would upon arriving from Storey’s Way, at the easternmost end of the site. By far the most classically theatrical architectural moment within the whole college ensemble, the arrival sequence is particularly formidable. A student arrives at the college having bypassed the southern range of courts, at some point along the road they meet the primary - and only - discernible axis within the college complex and turn perpendicular to the road. There they are confronted by the symmetrical gatehouse and porter’s lodge on axis, with two great planes of brickwork flanking the front gate of the college, it can only be approached by crossing a symbolic drawbridge over a wide rectangular moat to a forecourt enclosed on three sides by the college. In reality neither feature is truly defensive, but the theatricality of the moment warrants dramatising, certainly many competitors designed great earthworks, lakes and moats, and worked their designs to resemble defensive barricades in accordance with the traditional insularity of the Cambridge college.

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Elevation of the porter’s lodge viewed on the college’s principal axis perpendicular to Storey’s Way

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The intersection of the collegiate realm and the outside world is here manifested by the portico of the lodge, where, at the top of a low flight of steps, the student traverses into the secluded world of the college. The drama of this moment draws on architectural antecedent in the collegiate typology, where a gatehouse traditionally amplifies the significance of transitioning from the outside to the rarefied domain of the interior, and in doing so aggrandises the institution it controls access to. The symbolism of the event at Churchill is a reminder of the collegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ambivalence to depart from and challenge traditional modes of collegiate living, and only once within the college precinct does the axial arrival sequence dissolve into a labyrinthine network of pathways, routes and spaces belied by the monumentality of the gatehouse.

However, In a departure from the prevailing model of the Cambridge college, where passing through the gatehouse the student enters directly into the primary court, at Churchill the model is challenged by a literal crossroads off the main axis. Ahead, an internal concourse on two levels subverts the expected release of arriving into a court, for the architects chose to pursue a hybrid structure of court and spine. Instead of arriving into the formal landscape of the court, the view is telescoped out down the wide processional corridor of the spine, and out to the lawn beyond. From this spine the main ceremonial functions of the college are accessible, it acts as a street for the ceremonial activity of the college. Instead of emerging into the court, the student notices it obliquely to the side, either out of the windows of the concourse, or, if they decide to turn left at the crossroads via a covered colonnade, they can walk the raised path which circumscribes the main court.

Following the second route, towards the south cluster of the residential courts, the character of the space segues from the monumental arrival axis to a more intimate sequence of spaces which frequently open and close long and short-range views through the courts.

As the student approaches the first court, orbiting clockwise around the large court - which can be understood as the collegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s centre of gravity - an altogether more medieval arrangement of spaces become available. The composed linearity of the concourse is quickly forgotten upon entering the court-clusters 20

The Courts at Churchill College

where the cloister idea is allowed to totally govern the spatial logic of the plan. Three-sided raised ambulatory spaces around the ground floor of the court serve to give access to staircases leading up to the accommodation above, however, the functional purpose of the walkway - to give access to the staircase - is dignified by the significance accorded to the act of processing through these spaces.

Central to the idea of the college, and particularly salient at Churchill College in a unique fashion, is the notion of urbanity. In most colleges this idea is generated by the intensity of adjoining functions of differing degrees of formality and typically incompatible arrangements in close proximity to one another. At Churchill, where the defiant zoning of the ceremonial functions segregates the residential and the communal, the urbanity of the college is generated not by organisational means, but by a surprisingly urban fabric of formal and informal processional spaces at ground level. The staircase model, which necessitates frequent front doors at ground level creates off the main ambulatory route regular subsidiary branches leading to the accommodation, all these branches converge together locally in each court-clusterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s open plateau. The various pathways and absence of a linear, predefined route creates opportunities for spontaneous interaction, spaces for small and large groups to assemble, and a host of differing degrees of privacy and participation.

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Diagram showing a typical arrangement of courts constituting each court-cluster. A smaller paved court with two adjacent sunken garden courts, and the web of pathways at ground level

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The permeation of the raised ambulatory idea through the courts is realised to such a degree that in some areas the ground floor is nothing more than an open undercroft below the accommodation block suspended overhead, where the ground floor accommodation is eroded away entirely it enables limited â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;externalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; views from within the courts. The generosity of the cloister is regularly counterposed by enclosed spaces and sudden dog-legs and alleyways which punctuate the experience of processing through the courts with a varied spatial encounters which have their parallels in urban situations. This alternating rhythm of solid to void typifies the experience of moving through the courts, translating the repetitive action of walking through the courts with specific localised spatial events, moments of compression, and moments of release. The labyrinthine structure and cadence of these outdoor enclosed spaces, whilst somewhat disorienting, atomises the scale of the college into more particular episodes, which gives primacy to the lived experience of the student and their perception of the college through movement, rather than the projection of a singular image of the court from within.

Remaining on the ground level, it is not clear where the networks of pathways truly end, they all orbit and re-orient one back to the centre, there is no prescribed terminus. However, if the student were to depart from the path, and its circuitous route which pervades the whole college structure, and move into the major court delimited by the outer residential courts, or even venture beyond the college precinct entirely up Madingley Rise, the spatial cadence shifts from the pulsating rhythm of space in the courts, to the monotone expansive space as defined by the lawn. From here the student can appreciate 22

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the courts as ranges as their cellular structure coalesces into an indistinct mass, and the granular network of internal walkways becomes obscured. The student who walks to the far end of the grounds, on the raised plateau shared by the chapel and couples’ flats, can turn back to face the college and observe it in its entirety. From this point the college is tangible as a singular static entity, a linear four storey belt of brick interrupted by the taller mass of the dining hall meld into a readily identifiable conglomerate. Furthermore, over the uniform horizon of the college, the student can see to the Cambridge skyline a mile beyond, so that from the remote curtilage of the chapel, they are able to clearly define the image of the college to which they belong as a single domain and orient themselves in relation to the city and colleges beyond.

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The street network of ambulatory spaces isolated in plan - a more frequent spatial rhythm of the perimeter court-clusters is counterposed by the more rarefied open space of the centre Section through a court showing the compressive effect of the undercroft in narrowing ‘internal’ views into the court and ‘external’ views into the landscape

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Returning to the image of each court then, in contradistinction to the homogenous external flank of the college, the means by which court is allowed to express its own individuality are manifold: in the first instance through the particular plan of its specific ground plane. Some of the ambulatory spaces are open to the larger central court, others are enclosed, some give access on three sides, others only give access to opposite sides, some pathways lead around to the next cluster, whilst others reveal themselves only to be a cul-de-sac. What is common spatially to each cluster is that they all consist of two larger courts around a sunken lawn separated by a smaller, court centred on a paved square, thus forming a nucleated, dumbbell-like plan on a repetitive planning module. In spite of the ostensibly regular formal arrangement of the courts when viewed from the air or from Madingley Rise, each cloister is individuated enough to become a world of its own.

Above and below the plane of open movement of the cloister, further eccentricity is introduced in the particular landscaping of each court, and the irregular disposition of oriel windows around the residential accommodation above. Passing through each one of the sunken courts along the raised ambulatory space, the student passes through specific ‘biomes’ which help to distinguish one court from the next. Now in its maturity, the planting within each court lends a specificity to each one of the ten residential courts, in some cases manicured and others overgrown, the student who passes through the courts in succession will find themselves moving from one world to another. In some areas, where the original trees are still in situ and mature, the canopy creates a complete ceiling to the court, enclosing the court from above. The richness of this environment is compounded by the positioning of artwork within the court, which converts the raised pathway into something of a gallery for the landscape and art assembled within. Often the sculpture is placed at the end of a long ‘enfilade’ view between the piloti on which the buildings are raised, this has the effect of telescoping the view through multiple courts and always suggesting the presence of spaces beyond. It is in this collection of picturesque devices and the concentration of each small court around its own particular garden that elicits the inevitable association with the 24

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The specificity of each court is produced by a combination of its unique ground plane, landscape, artwork and oriel arrangement, so that what appears regular in plan is actually subtly individuated

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romantic ideals of the hortus conclusus, or walled garden, whereby each court flourishes into its own otherworldly eden.

With limited exceptions, in the context of the Cambridge college typology, an arboreal court is something of an anomaly. In a move away from tradition, whereby the court is usually a clear space devoid of planting and consisting of linear pathways traversing the open expanse, the Churchill court is instead a square of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;capturedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; landscape circumscribed on all sides by the residential rooms and raised ambulatory. This small world of the court is shared by the community of students whose rooms are banked around the edges of the walled garden.

Above the open ground plane the four walls which define the court are jettied out to the line of the platform, creating between them a more compressed cubic space than the more amorphous plan of the ground floor. Notwithstanding the clear delineation of the space of the court above the ground floor, each room projects an oriel window out beyond this line, jettying the rooms out even further above the lawn, and concentrating all vistas out on the space of the court. A number of projections animated the facades of the courts and ranges, not just oriel bays for a single student room, but all manner of functions and bay types were jettied over the court.

The inevitable over-articulation of the surface is compounded by the junctions between structural members, which are tectonically held apart apparently to break down the megastructure of the court-cluster into more readily apprehensible forms.

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The court above the ground floor is enlivened by the manifold oriel arrangements and types, in tandem with the particularity of the landscaping, it renders each court visually unique. Seen as a constellation of bays projecting out over the court, the oriel represents the interface between the private world of the student, and the space of shared participation, which is the court. The intent of the filter zone of the oriel window, its generous opening and heated terrazzo banquette inside, was to project a limited impression of the particular interior world of the student to the small commons of the court. In reality, the intimate scale of the landscaped courts, and even more so in the smaller paved courts without any shielding vegetation - proved too closequarters for most students, whose curtains are rarely drawn back to their full extent. Ironically, on the outward facing elevations, where the conditions for shared participation are diminished but the overlooking distances extended, students are content to open up their rooms to the exterior and draw back the curtains. Indeed, during the design development the courts were enlarged pre-empting the feeling of claustrophobia of Sheppardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original design, where the courts had been designed with intimacy in mind so that a student could call out from their room and be heard by a student on the far side of the court.

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View along a raised ambulatory with the rooms jettied over to make a covered cloister, beyond which the scattered arrangement of oriel windows project over the lawn View into the court from above where the concept of the walled garden becomes apparent. The tall brick volume is a staircase tower.

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Notwithstanding the question of privacy, the oriel window becomes the architectural mode of expression for the individual student, and, looking across the elevation of each range of the court, the student body becomes quantifiable, reified on the face of the building. This mosaic of individual oriels becomes animated when the conditions are amenable, and the courts gain their vitality from students using the oriel window to read, sit or work projected out over the court, (or into the landscape) engaged as part of a performative ritual of collegiate life. The charged void of the court assimilates the individual representation of each student into a visible manifestation of the student body at as a greater part of the whole. In other words, centripetal orientation of the oriels into the centre of the court in turn establish each court as a nexus as part of the college community, and the transition of scales from the individual, to the court grouping, to the college becomes apparent.

A key component of that community, which many competitors did not deviate from, is staircase access to rooms. The staircase model familiar to the Cambridge college typology omits the requirement for corridor access to bedrooms and the preference for such was a steer to competitors in the brief.

At Churchill each court is surrounded by five or six staircases with four staircases situated at each corner of the plan and two along offset along the length of the plan. This compact arrangement, stacked over three floors (sometimes with ground floor accommodation) creates vertical groupings of rooms directly accessed from the staircase, establishing small groups of around 10 students and fellows.

Standard bedrooms, comprising a single study room, and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;setsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; consisting of bedrooms with a separate study and living rooms, are interspersed around the plan, further contributing to the individuality 28

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of each court, and, at a smaller scale, of each staircase. Under this model, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;front doorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at ground level are shared between students and fellows, meaning that younger and more experienced members of the college coexist side by side as a vital component of collegiate life.

Each set of rooms radiate from the staircases, and due to their position at the corner of the plan, the result is that a student may not necessarily overlook their court, i.e the court from which they accessed their staircase, moreover their view may not even be of a court at all. Nevertheless, the clarity of community sizes is quite apparent under this model, and so the student is aware of the social groups to which they belong under the architectural This page

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Plan of a single court highlighting staircase access. Typically this plan interlocks with other adjacent courts so that corner staircases give access to rooms in four directions.

Oriel window types. The individuality of the plan generates an assortment of variants on a standard type, where some oriels are individual others are paired, others are full brick projections

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hierarchy of their landing, to their staircase, to their court, to their cluster, to their campus, and finally to the college. Thus the student is able to orient themselves to the college as a whole with the architecture facilitating this identification, this amounts to an attempt to allows students to situate themselves as part of a larger society, an attribute which marks the quintessence of a collegiate community. The college court can be understood as a means by which to foster socialisation and a particular collective identity at a number of scales, situating the student within the student body and providing the armature for them to establish the extent of their physical integration.

The studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to establish a self-identity within a large institution parallels tendencies within post-war university planning, concerning the individual and their corresponding position in the society of the university. The physical college can be seen as an intermediary to achieve this utopianist end. Specifically at Churchill College, in its adaptation of the college archetype, the clarity of the hierarchy of the individual to the institution is not so much a matter of interpreting a social scale but positioning the student as part of broader social networks and places of shared participation. In the creation of a self-contained and informal urbanity based on the clusters of humanely scaled courts and separate ceremonial functions, the college introduces a new conception of the archetype â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;campusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a microcosmic society materialised as a formal structure. The closed nature of the college, and the urban nature of the campus here elide to construct a very particular social composition, that of a small polity whose boundaries are apprehensible to the individuals who inhabit it.

The socio-political concentration of the collegiate campus attempts to reify the post-war conception of utopia under the idea of an identifiable collection buildings representing an ideal community as an integrated whole, engendering a resonant synthesis of architecture and the society it represents.

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The student in the oriel projected over the court participates in the shared condition of the collegiate life.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEY

The following photographs aim to capture the aforementioned spatial conditions, namely the relationship between the courts and the landscape, as well as the scenographic qualities of the ambulatory spaces. The survey begins with some of the works of art located within and around the courts.

photography from Autumn 2020

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Barbara Hepworth - Four-Square (Walk Through)

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Dhruva Mistry - Diagram of the Object overlooking the college from Madingley Rise Barbara Hepworth - Four-square, sited on the college’s principal axis Denis Mitchell - Gemini and the flank of the north court-cluster Robert Adams - Two Circular Forms No.1, within the Master’s Garden, overlooked by the JCR Staircase 35 Porte cochère and the Master’s Lodge Undercroft overlooking the Winter Border and Hepworth sculpture Michael Gillespie - Spiral, orients students when entering from the courts from Churchill rd An undercroft and the indication of a court beyond Tropical and native planting biomes in adjacent courts Bernard Meadows - Pointing Figure in a small paved court Christine Fox - Crescent Moon Bull, terminates an oblique vista through a series of courts Frames onto the landscape beyond, and frames up to the sky A raised ambulatory space looking into the court A raised ambulatory space looking out of the court A compact moment and change in direction creates opportunities for spontaneous interaction Bernard Meadows - Pointing Figure, directs movement through the courts

The Courts at Churchill College

Acknowledgements

With thanks to: Dr. Felipe Hernandez - Prof. Nick Bullock - Aram Mooradian

Colophon

Benjamin Carter, 2020, Cambridge all work is the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own except where stated otherwise Print edition of 3

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APPENDIX 1: ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

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Architect’s rendering of the courts ‘Designing Churchill: 1959-2016 Architectural Panel Discussion’, (2016), <https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/news/2016/ sep/30/designing-churchill-19592016-architectural-panel-d/> [accessed 25 October 2020]

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Architect’s plan of the courts. Note the extent of the courts as a enveloping structure, and the crescent shaped moat to the south west. The original location of the chapel dominates the approach from Storey’s Way. Simon Henley, ‘London Calling: British Modernism’s Watershed Moment - The Churchill College Competition’, (2014), <https://www.archdaily.com/521417/london-callingbritish-modernism-s-watershed-moment-the-churchill-collegecompetition> [accessed 2 November 2020]

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The Courts at Churchill College

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The College and Campus

APPENDIX 2: SKETCHBOOK

56

The Courts at Churchill College

57

The College and Campus

APPENDIX 2: SKETCHBOOK

58

The Courts at Churchill College

59