Cambridge Architecture CA 45

Spring 2001

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architecture urbanism ·""qvironmental issues • in the Cambridge area

THE IDEAL VILLAS OF THE MATHEMATICS The building complex forming in Clarkson Road for the Centre of Mathematical Sciences is the largest new grouping of University buildings to emerge within the City since the Science Parks and they presage the scale of the impending development off the adjacent west Cambridge sites. Just as with Robinson College, local planners have been under thrall of the low density context and its influential inhabitants. The massive failure to generate adequate proactive strategic frameworks for the inevitable expansion of university facilities and associated development again returns home to roost, leading to reactionary and defensive responses which negate the essence of the urban fabric. The unique matrix of academic and city life is the historic legacy of the townscape of Cambridge, and the formation of urban mix and urban scale.

Digging a hole and burying your buildings may be a smart answer to 'being in keeping'.

Bunkering down certainly is a familiar idiom for architects Cullinan and Partners who have built a design tradition out of telly-tubby architecture; but it is a strange bedfellow to the !audible claims of sustainability to embark on such extremes of subsoil dispersal. The newly opened building also reviewed here for the Divinity School on the Sidgwick site, designed by the same architects, at least appears to settle more lightly on the earth; perhaps out of deference to its ultimate orientations.

CABE IN CAMBRIDGE Chie Executive John Rouse and Bridget Sawyer Regional Officer of e new Commission for Architectu re and the Built Environment met representatives of profe ssional and civic agencies and societies, in February, in their first visit to the Eastern Region. The visit occu rs at a me when the new governmental regional framework is becoming es ablished and collateral culture agencies are beginning to be formed.

Hudson (Hudson Anthony Featherstone, Norwich and London) has been appointed architectural representative to Living East, the regional cultural consortium . The Eastern Arts Board has yet to get on board the architectural representation in that organisation. Peter Studdert is the CAB E representative for East Anglia . A steering group for a regional architectural platform has now been convened from which may be expected a stronger voice for architecture and built environment on he Regional Councils.

As a result of a presentation by the Cambridge Trust for the Urban Environment (shades of the forme r Regional Architecture Gallery in Kings Parade) which has maintained links with the national Architectural Centre etwo rk, an offer of fun ding for a feasibility study for a two-stage architecture centre in Cambridge was made on the spot by John Rouse . A steering group for a new centre has been convened jointly with the City for an inaugu ral meeting in April.

CL

Project Manager: Davis Langdon Management Architect: Edward Cullinan Architects Contractor: John Laing Construction Quantity Surveyor: Northcroft Structural Engineer: Buro Happold Mechanical & Electrical: Roger Preston & Partners Landscape: Livingston Eyre

CENTRE FOR MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES With all the developments in world wide communication it is reassuring to realise that the physical groupings of people in close proximity are still valued in academic life.

The new Centre on Clarkson Road is a consolidation of the various mathematical disciplines on one site, joining the Isaac Newton Institute and all grouped in close physical proximity to create "a perfect environment for interaction and discussion considered the essential ingredients for the study of mathematics in the 21st century."

Edward Cullinan's master plan , provides for this with a series of interconnected pavilions each of a size to house an interdisciplinary group of 40 mathematicians with a professor. These are in turn grouped around a core building of lecture, library, and catering facilities.

Forty personal spaces (13.Sm' floor area is the norm) with some locally shared facilities is seen as ideal grouping for academic organisation and interaction, and it lends itself to phased construction, as funds become available, built in separate pavilions at around 3 million a time. It also creates a building unit more in scale with the large 'villas' around the site, principally on Clarkson Road. These vary widely in character and style but have an average plot width of about 32 metres. In discussions with the City, the planners asked for the new buildings to be 'in-keeping' and to reinforce the street; to provide a street edge.

Early schemes show the buildings relatively close to Clarkson Road , contributing to the suburban street scale and character, in dialogue with the residential houses opposite and allowing for landscape planting between. There were also concerns apparently from both City planners and local residents to retain the

'parkland setting'- an amenity they had been useo co.

Arising from this the new buildings were then drawn into a more compact arrangement which losts its relationship with the street but allowed a belt of trees and hedging to be planted to follow the perimeter of the site ; presumably also acting as partial concealment for the buildings. Sadly this has made the scheme more inward looking and the relationship between the buildings tighter, more urban and more axial. The library is resited where there is more space available behind the Isaac Newton building .

In the individual pavilions the rooms are arranged around informal areas for impromptu meetings and discussions and throughout the complex there are special glass tables and bu ilt-in boards for writing notes and calculations. Rooms have high and low level vents, on the old principle of sash windows, set within a heavily modelled facade which offers shade, reduces overheating, etc. An interesting cladding aesthetic has developed in response to this. The heavy mas structure also suits these naturally ventilated builc. which are cooled automatically overnight according to monitored weather conditions. The central lantern to each pavilion is designed to exploit the stack effect and light and ventilate inner communal areas.

A decision was taken not to have basements, which tend to elaborate fire provisions and increase costs. But this has meant huge volumes of site material being dug out and carted away to reduce the perceived bulk of the buildings. The central facilities are roofed over with grass and pavements. There are interconnections between all the buildings at low level and the alternative routes over the central grassed area create a recreational atmosphere. Walking around the site at present the scooped-out land form and lack of mature landscaping tends to visually push all the buildings together. With their complexity and rich variety of forms the effect is rather cluttered and awkward , which in time will be mitigate by planting.

In many ways it is regretable that the earlier concept, with its street frontage and parkland setting, was not given weightier consideration and adopted for the more sypathehically urban scheme it would have been , especially in the context of the larger plan for West Cambridge.

David Raven

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(Left) View along route (Top) Rotunda from gardens /Middle) Ground floor plan (Boffom) Block plan

REFLECTING HISTORY The Stirling and Gowan History Faculty stands in space as an object rather than joining with its neighbours to model the open space between. It seems to almost spring out of its sea of paving ; a building to be walked around and looked at with its dramatic profile and forms gradually unfolding. With the Law Library Foster sought to engage with the History building through the inflections of its sweeping curved glazed atrium and entrance porch (CAg 32 Summer 1995).

The Faculty of Divinity relocated here as a centre for the study of the world's religions, joins its sister disciplines of Classics and Oriental Studies as well as History on the Sidgwick site. Edward Cullinan's drum-shaped building is sculpted to make a nrocal gesture on the west side of History with a 1..

J corner entrance forming, with the ramped entrances to History opposite, a small entrance court to the two buildings. The disparate forms of History and the Music School , on diagonal corners, are also somehow brought closer together to help compose this new space.

The cladding to the Divinity building is light and reflective with its horizontal bands of GRC and glass and aluminium louvres, providing some affinity with History if in a slightly whimsical way. The rotunda form seems to hold its own against the more vertical forms of the History building and provides a pleasing scale to the new square. Beyond, the new building is arranged in a series of stepped south facing terraces. These make a defining edge to the paved route through to the Sedgwick site and to the gardens of Selwyn College to the west and the longer views of the History Building from this side are preserved . The cladding system continues along the paved route for this linear section of building and yet there seems here an opportunity for a different expression, where most of the rooms face into the small courtyard garden behind. Perhaps more distinction could have been made between the rotunda and its ancillary forms?

Space restrictions were severe with this small

Project Manager: University Estate Management Architect: Edward Cullinan Architects Main Contractor: Sindall , Sawston Quantity Surveyor: Edmond Shipway & Partners Structure & Services: Whitby Bird & Partners

site and there is a full storey underground. As well as being within the setting of a grade 1 listed building , Selwyn Gardens surround two sides and there is a tall listed Wellingtonia and mature privet hedge respectively to the north and west. All this imposed strict requirements on the proximity of excavation and construction .

Internally the building feels light and airy. There is almost continuous perimeter glazing and generous floor to ceiling heights. Solar gain and glare are controlled by the bespoke aluminium louvres externally and by timber venetian blinds on the garden side. Except in formal teaching rooms the building is naturally ventilated. Windows at desk level open individually and there are further vents at high level which open automatically at night according to cooling requirements. Internally the reinforced concrete structure and plastered block walls give the required thermal mass. Planning is informal and relaxed with some bold use of colour. For the larger rooms and circulation spaces enclosing walls are shaped in a way which befits their function. This establishes differentiation and a sense of identity and location, creating an easy passage for use by varying volumes of people through the building.

The culminating feature of the building is the galleried library on the top two floors which offers splendid , unexpected, but not intrusive, views almost in-the-round of the buildings and landscape of west Cambridge .

David Raven

Landscape: Livingston Eyre Associates Acoustics & Technical Audit: Bickerdike Allen Partners

VILLAGE DESIGN STATEMENTS Some six years or so ago the then Countryside Commission fostered the Village Design Statement concept and Cottenham, along with Cartmel in Cumbria helped pioneer the idea (CAg 31 ). The Countryside Agency is pursuing the campaign across the country and is now backed-up by the government's Rural White Paper (Our countryside:the future 2000) urging local communities to set up their own appraisal plans and VDS's for adoption as Supplementary Planning Guidance.

Essentially aimed at voluntary commitment to the local environment through partnership with local authorities, the citizen participation movement it embodies carries deeper socio-politicalovertones. Backed up by government funding the project offers another opportunity for disinterested professional engagement with the local community, through enabling and provision of specialist advice in these essentially citizen-driven initiatives.

Challenging people to document what they value in their own habitat is a learning experience for all , including those professionals who get engaged , and it is an awareness-raising exercise which, if so handled , can lead to more informed public opinion and more rational assessment of the impact of change brought about by new development in their area - a constructive approach based on principles uncovered and held in common as a result of the VDS exercise, as opposed to NIMBYism. In the case of Cottenham the village design group have formed a lasting association which continues to back-up the Parish and District Councils in their planning assessments. Architects who are concerned that the movement will strenthen those conservative and backward-looking design tendencies of conservationists and the general public should be in there to help steer positive and constructive attitudes towards new development. Feedback from Cottenham may not be all that encouraging, but we should learn from this.

Great Shelford has now signed-up to this latest impetus for VDS's. A village whose conservation area status is currently under review, the Shelford VDS should underpin the planning authorities own views on a village with , in reality, a relatively small number of listed buildings and even fewer building groups of particular merit. There are other factors which affect perceptions, the richness of tree planting for instance. And whether Great Shelford is a village at all? The South Cambridgeshire Local Plan is coy about distinguishing between Great Shelford and its conjoint neighbour Stapleford.

Little Shelford enjoys a clear physical distinction by virtue of the river 'valley'.

But collectively and ever since the introduction of the railway in1845 or thereabouts, whether they qualify for the appelation of 'village' or are now a suburban extension , through the ribbon development out of Trumpington , of the City of Cambridge.

Certainly they form a close part of the city region , and that definition of 'village' which is governed by the predominance of rural occupation and employment is long behind us here.

Whether the nomenclature is that important, what matters (at least in VDS terms) is the distinctiveness of the local environment and the identity this imparts to individuals and a discernible community. The notion of citizen participation in the local environment is recognised as larger than any single form of settlement, and its methodology is encouraged now for general forms of development.

Interior of rotunda

SHACKLETON EXTENDED

Cross section through entrance

Plan of top floor

Herman Ewticks

Client:

Scott Polar Research Institute University of Cambridge

Architect:

John Miller & Partners

Contractor:

Haymills (Contractors) Ltd

Quantity Surveyor:

David Langdon & Everest

Structural Engineer:

Campbell Reith Hill

Mechanical & Electrical :

Fulcrum Consulting

The main Scott Polar building (Herbert Baker 1934) grade II listed, with its formal entrance and pleasing scale is a familiar frontage on Lensfield Road, somewhat dwarfed between Chemistry and the Catholic Church. It was extended substantially at the rear into an H plan by Peter Bicknell in 1968, establishing the Shackleton Memorial Library, a new entrance and other facilities. Subsequently University Estate Management built a glazed linking elem t above the entrance. Another thirty years on r , space was needed. The Institute for both rese arc~ and undergraduate study has the largest specialist polar library and continues to collect material and artefacts from ongoing expeditions. This latest intervention by John Miller and his partner Richard Brearley, which received an RIBA Regional Award in 1999, has resulted in a number of proposals to modernise and improve the building. These provide for a 30% increase in floor area for both storage and library space and a specialist section for rare books.

This is housed in the rotunda extension , visible from Lensfield Road . A further library floor has been added to the roof and part of the lower floors have been rebuilt in conjunction with the rotunda to improve circulation, administration and display and to extend the basement archive space.

The new rotunda is a major unifying element incorporating a stair in one quadrant which links all four floors, expressed externally by the glazed wall which overlooks the Catholic Church. This and- • ...,_ blade wall which further subdivides the interiot library use are angled to magnetic north. Above is a square lantern set at 45° to this.

The rebuilt and extended areas generally use a concrete frame largely concealed . Externally the banded treatment of the original building has been echoed in the rotunda with Kelton Stone and Butterley buff stock bricks. The roof extension over the link is made in lightweight steel fully glazed at each end and oversailing on the entrance side to form a brise soleil to the library carrels.

The use of coffered ceilings follows the earlier extension. These incorporate acoustic, service and lighting systems above the book stacks giving a clean uncluttered appearance. The refurbished entrance areas and lifts and new showcases incorporate panels of glass for enclosure and display either etched clear or ice blue, conveying an appropriate imagery. The use of pure simple geometry with oak floors and white paint everywhere creates a unified interior and a reassuring feeling of solidity and continuity.

David Raven

Cambridge Futures Award

Layout plan

NEW WINGS FOR JESUS Architects Eldred Evans and David Shalev have now added a third side to the court they began five years ago with their Quincentenary library for Jesus College by building a residential block alongside Jesus Lane.

The college masterplan envisages completing the courtyard with a music suite and auditorium on the east side, but in an open style , characteristic of this edge-of-city college.

The new building does not contain many surprises, deliberately following a pattern set by the library which was itself contextual and traditional in form , at least in its external appearance (the most exciting feature of the library is its magnificent barrel vaulted interior). We have the 2" Williamson Cliff bricks in white penny struck mortar, the limestone sings, the high parapet and Georgian style - . dStration . It is detailed with the crisp precision we have come to expect from Evans & Shalev and it fits effortlessly into its setting but this time there are no large internal spaces for the architects to show off the skill for which they are best known.

Instead the planning is so traditional that it can be considered radical in the extreme. Five staircases with two rooms on one side, two on the other are repeated for three floors giving twelve rooms to a staircase. At ground level each stair is entered directly from the outside through a single door on to a very small landing. The staircase has curved landings, open tread steps and an elegantly tall window which allows light and views to filter through. Otherwise the plan is unexceptional. There are no lifts, no corridors, no lobbies, common rooms or foyers, just the traditional layout of preference used by Cambridge colleges for centuries.

Below the rooms there is a basement, which on the courtyard side contains large areas of much needed college storage space. On the Jesus Lane side there are two gyprooms per staircase . These are quite generous kitchens with space for six students to sit and eat and they open out onto a narrow, but cleverly planned , sunken courtyard. This is a well-lit space and a timber creeper clad retaining wall leads

the eye up to the high boundary wall , which is a dominant feature of Jesus Lane. As the wall had to be preserved there is no hint of the courtyard from the street and this blank, enigmatic public face demonstrates another tradition typical of so many college buildings in Cambridge. It is interesting to contrast this with Eric Parry's new building for Pembroke, which does give the public a glimpse, albeit a tantalising one, of the academic world beyond.

The top floor rooms have vaulted ceilings and clerestorey windows facing a maintenance walkway where all services, rainwater pipes and vents are concealed from view behind the parapets. If you do not want to make a virtue of this kind of stuff, and clearly the architects here wanted it tidied away, this is a clever way of doing it and leaves the facades unencumbered. Curious, though , that the echimneysf, so prominent on the roofline, serve no other function than as an external expression of the staircase walls.

The boilers are tucked away in the basement - two very small ones for each staircase.

Each student room has a well-planned en-suite shower room and furniture designed by the architects (with joiner Martin Grierson) in their characteristic understated white lacquer style. There are small variations to the plan worth noting: disabled student rooms with trench doors at ground level at each end, some larger rooms on upper levels are used as seminar rooms but by and large that's it. There is an obsessiveness in the detailing which can be a bit wearing, straightforward problems such as window ventilation become unnecessarily over-wrought for example, but larger-scale issues are dealt with in a remarkably un-fussy way. So why is that so radical?

Since the early 1960s most new college buildings have been groundbreaking in some way. That architects would produce a signature building was expected , if not by the clients then certainly by the architectural community. Interestingly David Evans says that they were ''terrified" when given the Jesus commission. All that history, all that pressure to bunk it and be different. Well , here is a building which dares to be the same. The same as its slightly older sister next door but also the same as Morley Horderfs 1931 range opposite and countless other well mannered but essentially 'ordinary' residential blocks all over Cambridge. Occasionally a building transcends this ordinariness to become a classic - one thinks of Lutyens' Benson Court building at Magdalene for example - and it is quite possible that in time this building will do the same. For buildings like this time is definitely on their side .

Jeremy Lander

Cambridge Futures is celebrating its receipt of the Royal Town Planning lnstitute's award for Innovation in Planning, beating 19 other finali sts.

This national award, sponsored by the Planning Officers Association acknowledges the project's "highly original" visualisation of the options for the growth of Cambridge and the breadth of the study. The judges described the CF model as a new tool for communication of ideas to the public, making "a significant contribution to the development plan process". They also recommended that every large town or city would benefit from such a presentation.

Project Director Professor Marcial Echenique expressed delight at winning , acknowledging the collaboration between local business , politicians, the University and the public throughout the process , a factor echoed by the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in his letter of congratulation to the team .

Cochairman Councillor John Durrant noted how the group has become instrumental in the strategic planning process.

Following encouragement from all sides Cambridge Futures is now planning to take its research into a new stage . Most parties agree that the role of the transportation system is a key factor in any proposals for the future of the area. Cambridge Futures proposes to analyse the options for transport in the region for the next 3050 years. The aim is not find the solution but, to furnish comparitive options so that informed decisions can be made about which direction the tran sportation system should be heading. For more details see the web site at www.arct.cam .ac.uk/cambfut Rob Homewood

NEW CAA CHAIRMAN Kenneth Mark was appointed Chairman of Cambridge Association of Architects in September 2000. His London and Saffron Walden based architectural practice was founded in 1978 and consolidated in Saffron Walden in 1992. Prior to private practice Kenneth was involved in the reconstruction of war damaged Plymouth; he served in the architects' departments of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras , and the Borough of Camden ; and he has been Chief Architect to the Paddington Churches Housing Association .

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The ubiquitous semi

Standard semi plot

The "Highsett" replacement

3 storey Highsett town house

Rebuilt plot as terrace development

PLOT INTENSIFICATION

The "Cremona ' site intensification Air rights development over existing dwellings

Natural growth of the City, notwithstanding the calls of the Government's Urban White Paper and PPG3, intends towards intensification, through the process of land value and shortage. Cambridge Urban Forum carried out some studies of the existing urban fabric in conjunction with the Cambridge Futures project to test the capacity for raising density. This part of the study looked at the suburban areas of Cambridge and the ubiquitous semi-detached development characteristic of the between-wars growth of the city.

It found that conventional plot sizeswere favourable to doubling of units, either through rebuilding or by 'raising the roof'. Only present planning attitudes stand in the way of capitalising on this potential for more efficient use of land and its byproduct - the improvement of urban scale.

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Urban land use efficiency

The potential for raising the capacity of developed land within the City should be considered alongside brownland development, either by regeneratio r:i low density development; piecemeal backland L , infill; or by plot intensification . Planning policy in recent history has favoured low density, which poses urban sprawl , as in the ribbon developments along the routes leading out of the City; or it tends to satellite development (Bar Hill, Bourn). With the Green Belt the inevitable outcome has been the virtual take-up of all sites within city boundaries. This study identified measures centred on intensification of land use in selected locations for more socially rich and compact urban living.

A consequence of the pre-war speculative development was the obsessive replication of a singular type, regardless of the range of occupancy.

The spectrum of housing need should be reflected in the stock of accommodation in the city. Projections of future expansion indicate a more varied mix. Marketled housing supply is neither delivering an adequate nor a sustainable product. This all-too-ready acceptance of market-dominated thinking needs to be questioned and challenged.

Two approaches have been adopted in looking at a representative sector of semi-detached housing in the City. A typical plot for a two-storied semidetached unit measures16m in overall frontage (8m per household) including side passage/garage. Sixty

Petersfield Trumpington-profile of a suburban semi dotted

year old plus housing could be replaced by twice as many units following the model of the 3 storied , 4m frontage town housing of Highsett.

The second and complementary technique would be to adopt a strategy employed by the municipal authorities in Cremona, Italy. By removing pitched roofs the air rights over existing properties are exploited by constructing loft apartments, or maisonettes, on independent stanchions , with separate access from a new stairway erected in the sideway. The same density increase would be achieved. An advantage would be the retention of ing building stock, with its sustainability implications.

Both ideas transform the building type from semidetached to 3 - 4 storied terraced more apposite to the urban scale . Which could occur on a plot-by-plot basis. Property values would then operate to effect, over time , a piecemeal raising of density. Private owners obtain benefit with the sale of air rights or by halving their site area, just as similar council-owned property would realise financial gain from the more efficient use of urban sites.

It is not without interest to compare terraced housing in Cambridge of the nineteenth century, of which there are a number of noteworthy examples the diagram (above) compares the section of Petersfield in Trumpington Street with that of a typical suburban semi. The semi-basement, five storied structure points up the inefficiency and profligacy qf city land use by planners in the following century.

The two examples have employed prototypical es, to make the point about achievability. There limit to the range of redesign possibilities. The loft (or shell) idea linked with the 'Cremona' notion opens opportunity for a more flexible pattern for living and living/working , for mixed occupancy and ownership.

This intensification of urban land use entails density, mixed use and mixed occupancy. It looks towards the hybridisation of buildings with the potential for cyclical change of use. Concepts such as the home office are given a new impetus by the economic and technological changes induced with the advent of the 'information age' . Home studio, home workshop, living above the shop; these are established typologies that are given inadequate recognition and expression in planning legislation , but which reflect the reality and complexity of urban living. Inconvenient to developers looking for standardisation and single function development for the maximisation of profit, new ways of procuring are needed. Gradual transformation of the existing stock in those areas of 'weakness' or under-performance in the existing urban fabric, allied with more flexible and imaginative planning control policy, is one of a range of strategic measures necessary to address the present and future needs of the City.

Colen Lumley

LETTERS ...

I feel I should respond to Jerry Lander's article Ever decreasing circles (CAg44) to correct some inaccuracies or misapprehensions. Jerry refers to the Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry as being led and mainly attended by quantity surveyors. This is far from the case. In the previous eighteen years of CFCl's existence the chair has been held by 3 quantity surveyors, 2 architects, 2 builders, 2 engineers, 1 town planner and 1 materials supplier.

Our new chairman is another town planner. Our Constitution requires that the CFCI Council be cross representational. The current Council comprises 3 architects (Thurlow, Emond , Bowman) 3 quantity surveyors, 3 builders, 2 consulting engineers, 2 town planners, 1 materials supplier, 1 college bursar and 1 solicitor. Of the 275 members of the Forum, 63 (23%) are architects, 59 (21.5%) are builders, 50 (18%) are engineers, and only 30 (11 %) are quantity surveyors. The remaining 26.5% covers a wide range of disciplines solicitors, financial services, chartered surveyors, property developers, and client organisations.

Although I cannot comment on the situation in which CAA finds itself, I can say that the success of CFCI Is due to a good mix of technical meetings, speakers of national or international repute who welcome the opportunity of speaking in Cambridge, an interesting programme of site visits, and a lot of bloody hard work by a few dedicated individuals. We do not expect our members to attend every meeting , they will turn out for something which they will find personally relevant to their own professional circumstances, or which gives them an opportunity to 'unwind' in mutually acceptable company.

A few attendees at our meetings and visits are retired professionals who (quite rightly) wish to keep up with what is happening in the construction field , but equally there is no doubt that many of our 'working' attendees value the networking opportunity with members of other professions and disciplines which our gatherings provide.

It may be that the role of the single professional meeting is now defunct. Personally, I would have no desire to spend a whole evening, in the company of only architects, anymore than I would want to spend it in the company of only chartered surveyors or chartered town planners!

Vernon McElroy Secretary CFCI

Cambridge Architecture gazette I write to thank you for presenting to the College Library a substantial run of Cambridge Architecture. We are delighted to have this periodical on our shelves. I have been trying for some time now to develop both our Cambridge collections and our current architectural holdings, so your very generous gesture is from our point of view most opportune.

Junior and senior members of college will find much of interest in this journal. I thought the commentary on Trinity Hall's new library in your last number particularly perceptive and fair.

Dr Mark Nichols Librarian/St John's College

Short Head The post of Head of Department of Architecture has now been filled by Alan Short, currently Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design, De Montfort University. An alumni of Cambridge with links to MIT Massachusetts, he takes over at a time when the University has announced it is joining forces with MIT to set up a transatlantic urban design studio. Coupled with the government-backed "centres of excellence" in which the Department at Cambridge is linked with the Bartlett School of Planning and LSE in London, a new era for the Department is surely dawning.

The practice of Short & Associates has made its name with strikingly silhouetted buildings in Leicester (Queens Building), Manchester (Contact Theatre), Coventry (University Library) evincing firmly held beliefs in naturally ventilated eco-friendly buildings. It will be a nice thing if this too presages a new focus for the rather self-regarding and stale expressionism of the Department's design studios of latter years (pace its exceptions).

CL

Nigel Frost

1951-2000 Architects and teachers both in Cambridgeshire and nationally were saddened to learn of the sudden death of Nigel Frost last November.

Nigel, who was a teacher at Comberton Village College, was inspired following an MA course to introduce the cross-curricular teaching of architecture in schools: he visited Denmark and the United States in the pursuit of his research.

In 1981 he founded Cambridge Architects and Teachers, and a Charitable Trust, The Cambridgeshire Architecture Workshop, in 1984.

When the RIBA began its programme for Architects in Schools he became its first Director, and then founded the Building Experiences Trust, of which Lord Rogers became Chairman. In 1996 he started his own Architecture Workshop Association, which he managed with his wife Elaine.

Nigel was a dedicated teacher who used all aspects of the built environment, from structure and materials to aesthetics and politics, to stimulate his students into imaginative proposals which frequently amazed the professionals. His innovations in a world of National Curricula, which is in some danger of viewing such broadranging initiatives as threatening and unwelcome, were truly inspiring.

NJ R

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CUF The objects of Cambridge Urban Forum are to raise public awareness of the urban environment of Cambridge and its environs and to stimulate debate on development issues future meeting: 23 June Are Cities Good For Us ?

Harley Sherlock 6.30pm The Martin Centre, Cambridge CFCI The objects of Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry are to promote a wider understanding and appreciation of the construction industry and to enhance its reputation with those who employ it and with the general public future meetings: 25 June Buchanan Report on the Cambridge Green Belt Contact: The Secretary 01223 515475 ISSN 1361-3375

A quarterly review produced by the Cambridge Association of Architects. The views in this gazette are those of the individual contributors and not of the Association . Copy deadline for CA 46 is 30 June 2001

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