Cambridge Architecture Gazette CA54

CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURE

Winter/Spring 2007

54

Drawing by Jon Harris Red Meadow Hill from Wheat Cases Barn. Cotton reserve

architecture urbanism environmental issues • in the Cambridge city region

A wildlife and farm reserve is currently being created by the Cambridge Preservation Society.

Covering well over 300 acres of pasture and agricultural land, the reserve is located south of the village of Coton - just to the west of Cambridge. Dr. Barry Pearce, former Director of the CPS and a Senior Lecturer in Land Economy,

has been a driving force behind the project; as well as planning the new Reserve he has been instrumental in gathering support, funding and obtaining planning permission. Current Chief Executive Carolin Göhler describes the process behind this exciting new addition to the Cambridge environment. next page

In this issue •

Fitzwilliam College: Photo Dennis Gilbert

Coton Countryside Reserve Carolin Göhler

National Cycle Network Katy Hallett

Shared Vision: a lesson in public art Andy O’Hanlon

Urban Housing Prototype Peter Carolin

Fitzwilliam College: A Snail’s Tale Jeremy Lander

A City’s Face is its Fortune - An American in Cambridge Julia Vitullo-Martin

Voices From the Shed Colen Lumley

Interview with Director of Inspire East Peter Carolin

The Hoardings Project 2006 Anthony Cooper

Ben Koralek - A Tribute Oliver Smith

Historic Core Appraisal John Preston

Letters... Cambridge Station John Sergeant

Soul in Architecture Michael Walton

Coton Countryside Reserve

In the 1930s the Cambridge Preservation Society acquired the farm land in what is now the Green Belt. Initial steps to improve the landscape were carried out with popular amenity planting of non-native Weeping Willows, Turkey Oaks and Perry Pears and some limited public access was tolerated by successive farm tenants. Further works were halted by the war, the subsequent acquisition of the Wandlebury Estate (eventually the first local country park) by the Society and the less favourable financial climate up to the late 1990s.

As a tenanted farm it will need to continue as a working farm to generate income but greater ecological diversity and improved public access is now being achieved. An initial grant to part-fund the master planning stage of the Reserve (Marshalls of Cambridge Ltd, 2003) kick-started further support via a major two year grant from the ODPM (20042006) and a Countryside Stewardship Scheme agreed with DEFRA (2004 to 2014). The scene was then set to carry out changes for the better and to establish the farm as a reserve with a variety of new and improved wildlife habitats, local countryside experience as well as enhanced public access, all coupled with a diverse volunteer programme supported by the Cambridge University’s Active Community Fund. Further support was gained from SCDC (woodland and hedge planting); EDF Energy (implementation of kestrel box); Cambridgeshire County Council (support of Government grant via administration) and even a generous anonymous donation to buy a pick-up truck.

More diverse wildlife habitats have now been created, more wildlife enhancing farming operations instigated and new recreational routes have been made. These give access to the diversified habitats and an eventual hill-top picnic area with a superb panoramic view across the local countryside including the famous skyline of historic Cambridge and its modern additions, intrusions to some.

Spine Route Construction Problems and design To improve access, a strong and durable track was needed to take the heavy and large farm machinery and recreational countryside explorers, including pedestrians, wheelchair and pram users, cyclists and horse riders.

The original design envisaged a gravel track. At an early stage it was apparent that on the difficult clay soil this would become easily damaged, incur immense maintenance costs and create recurring health & safety problems. Based on farm track designs in Fenland and as seen on continental farms the concept of an in-situ concrete surfacing was conceived – retaining as much unsealed surface as possible and a ‘green to the eye’ finish. The initial structural engineer’s design was further improved by the main contractor’s team.

Ground preparation After stripping and stacking the topsoil, the soil stabilisation process commenced using an array of machinery. This involved the admixture of concrete and lime to a formula adjusted to on-site subsoil conditions and rigorously tested throughout its application. A cover of geotextile was then topped with a thin layer of hardcore to provide a sound base for the concrete track and but not required for the adjacent 3m soft verge for horse riders. Open ditch drainage has been installed to capture run-off from piped drainage of the arable fields and from gravelled runnels clad in geotextile (French drains) placed at regular interval below the new combined access route. This is to prevent the future track and its substructure being affected by excess water expanding and contracting the clay-rich subsoil.

Paving works and making good

The concrete for the twin tracks was extruded from a paving machine and hand-finished. Major reinforced concrete junctions were installed by hand. Once the track was completed topsoil was spread back along the verges and ditches including the horse track. The topsoil was seeded with limited grass species as used elsewhere on the site to ensure that not too many non-native plant species were imported.

With the help of rain and warm temperatures in May the grass has begun to grow, though it struggled to establish itself during the unusually hot and dry summer months.

Upshot Initially local people were quite upset by the volume of soil turned around – despite pre-construction communications via ‘update talk and presentation’ events, updates to the local parish council, local bi-monthly newsletters and the formal planning application. However, the support and enthusiasm of people enjoying the completed improvements has been tremendous. The track provides a sound surface for people to enjoy all year-round walking, running, cycling, horse riding or wheelchair use in car-free surroundings. Visitor numbers to the reserve - albeit informally monitored - are increasing. The establishment of the concrete finished track already attracts disabled persons and parents using prams enjoying the countryside environment. It is already being used by local people, from surrounding villages and Cambridge, arriving via various Public Rights of Way Routes on foot or by bike.

Other information Within the last two years the countryside access has improved: footpath routes have doubled by 1.9 miles with an additional new bridleway (1 mile) enabling access for horse riders, disabled people and cyclists; over 27 acres (11.2ha) open access areas to meadows and pastures can be explored; numerous gates and bridges have been installed.

Over 4300 native tree and hedge plants have been planted and a new orchard founded (15 trees) which is to be extended over time; 35 bird boxes have been installed for farmland and hedge birds including owls and kestrels. Farming operations are improving in particular now with the implemented beetle banks (545m), arable weed area (0.36ha), over-wintering stubble fields (5ha) and conservation headlands (2ha).

Future projects will include a visitor car park, a pond, a small Reserve Centre, wetland creation, improved on-site interpretation and the development of educational programmes within the farmed land. A regular group of volunteers is carrying out surveys of flora and fauna on part of the site and practical conservation work such as scrub management, tree planting, hay meadow management and erecting fences and bridges. The latter is led by the CPS Ranger Team and offers excellent opportunities for basic informal conservation training as well as real practical experience just a short cycle ride form the City.

Overall the Reserve facilitates low cost and quiet recreational opportunities for local people. It is a great chance to undertake local countryside walks, to experience a working farm environment and to enjoy great views, unusually tall hedges and varied farm wildlife, almost endless sky, interesting sunsets and even better sunrises!

Development – 2 years on Achieving a major delivery grant within three months of obtaining planning permission resulted in work starting on site much faster than originally anticipated by the Society. With the original planning permission there was no need to detail any features – whether hard or soft landscape. This, plus complete implementation, had to be achieved within less than 18 months of a landscape architect being appointed by the

Panoramic from Red Meadow Hill Illustrations by Jon Harris

Society. Year one of the grant required predominantly planning and some boundary definition and habitat creation.

The vernacular style of farm boundaries – especially gates could not be established. For many decades farmers in the area have purchased ‘off the peg’ features being sold all over the country. The boundary style eventually chosen was based on the presence of more unusual gate posts leading to an old basic farm bridge using creosoted railway sleepers and with half-round tops. This together with essential Countryside Stewardship signage gave the basic idea for the Reserve’s boundary fencing and main signage at the entry points. On the whole it is of low intrusiveness and uses environment-friendly preservative treated timber. Reference has been made to standard farm gates varying from metal gates to timber gates – the former affording long views to arable fields, the latter defining meadows.

The farm land will have very few taller structures: the main notice boards and a kestrel box on a pole (no trees tall enough yet) and the future Reserve Centre, a modest replacement of the only building, a barn, on the site. With the first notice board a less standardised feature (compared with other local country parks) has been created by a volunteer landscape architect using plenty of green oak and excellent local joinery skills – this information point is a fun feature and attains a look based on natural materials.

Sourcing sustainable materials with local provenance, including locally produced planting material, has been difficult.

Acquiring plants from local provenance – or of at least East Anglian gene pool – would have been best from a wildlife conservation point of view, but proved impossible. In the end only English material has been used without overseas nursery stock. Easiest of all was the procurement of installation contractors providing mostly county-based skills but local timber, originally promised from the Region, eventually came from Estonia with no time to refuse the shipment – tight deadlines had to be met and sustainable procurement had not been part of the Government grant conditions.

The next years - more changes for the better are planned: Car park (Phase 1 completion late summer 2007) • including surrounding landscaped area (including pond, picnic meadow and tree plantings) Reserve Centre - housing a ranger base, public toilets, • education room and visitor information - a short list of architects has now been approved by the Society’s Board and in Summer 2007 the outline design phases will commence Site furniture - seating, shelters, informal exercise • stations • Paths and sustainable access – improvements and links with villages, sustainable transport including buses Boundary improvements – general boundary definition • including noise attenuation along M11 Directional signage - improvements on and off site • Surveys and management plans - further wildlife and • historic surveys and preparation of management plans Habitat improvements – including specific habitats such • as the riverine wildlife improvements along Bin Brook corridor and ditches; large wetland area near Bin Brook • Maintenance equipment and machinery – including tractor, trailer and other accessories • Farm ranger post - salary support to enable practical management, site patrol and on-site environmental education programme.

We are working on the detailed for some of these projects and features, all, of course, dependent on successful fundraising.

The reserve is a recreational provision – an emerging

strategic green space - which will develop, and its landscape mature, in time and at a slow pace - similar to Wandlebury Country Park. The aim is to ensure that a low-key tranquil recreational environment is accessible for people living nearby and in much denser housing development areas in Cambridge and the Sub-Region and that the Reserve provides improved biodiversity in conjunction with viable commercial farming.

This is not all the Society undertakes – over almost 80 years it has taken on covenants to protect areas from development (most famously the Grantchester Meadows); has been widely involved in planning matters, from establishment of the Green Belt designation to constructively commenting on a wide range of planning matters, has restored – predominantly for public access - historic buildings such as the Leper Chapel in Cambridge, the oldest post windmill in Bourn and the watermill in Hinxton, and for the last five years it has established environmental education at Wandlebury.

Carolin Göhler

Client: Cambridge Preservation Society (CPS) Landscape architects: Catriona Campbell/ Carolin Göhler Spine Route Engineers/construction design: Mott MacDonald, Cambridge & Carter Design Group, King’s Lynn Spine Route Principal contractor: R G Carter Civil Engineering, King’s Lynn Other major suppliers Hard Landscape: Chase Fencing Supplies, Centrewire, Ridgeons; Soft Landscape: Pinner & Sons Other contractors: Hard Landscape: Griffin Fencing, A & F Landscapes; Soft Landscape: Anglian Landscape Services Useful links www.cpswandlebury.org www.communities.gov.uk www.defra.gov.uk

Mel Fraser’s Comberton memorial

SHARED VISION: a lesson in public art Taslim Martin’s Icosahedron

National Cycle Network Genome Stripes John Sulston, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002, is a keen Sustrans supporter and in September 2005 launched the celebration for the Millennium Project’s 10,000th mile, the new route from Great Shelford to Addenbrookes Hospital, part of the National Cycle Network’s Route 11. Through discussions with him, Sustrans has developed a simple surface design based on the first section of a human gene, as a series of stripes in four colours laid as a 500mm band down the centre of the path.

The entire human genome is some 3,000,000,000 bases long, far too many to represent on the path; however it is divided into about 30,000 genes, each of which are codes for some part of our bodies. A portion of the gene BRCA2, essential to human development from the earliest stages of life, is represented here by 420 stripes in four colours.

Each colour stands for one of the four bases or building blocks of the genome, which are Adenine (green), Guanine (yellow), Cytosine (blue) and Thymine (red); they are replicated here in the exact sequence that is present in your body. As you cycle or walk over it you will be traversing a portion of your own genome. To traverse your whole genome at this scale would take a path going 15 times round the earth.

The material used to create the 10,000 stripes is Premark Preformed Thermoplastic. It is pre-manufactured sheet, organically pigmented and is therefore colourfast and will not fade. It is heat fused to the substrate providing a secure and lasting bond with a guarantee of 5 years but expected to last far in excess of this depending on vehicle traffic and substrate conditions.

The walking and cycling path will have light use in comparison to the vehicular traffic it was designed for. During the heat fusing process, a non-slip aggregate is applied, replicated throughout the material so that throughout the functional life of the product high levels of slip resistance are maintained.

Katy Hallett Right: Genome Stripes Far right: Harlton sign

The construction of new development in and around Cambridge is prompting the commissioning of more public art. The latest example is the mile long art work on the new sustrans cycle route from Shelford to Addenbrookes Hospital, which spells out the BRCA2 genome in vivid colours. What constitutes good public art? Where does it come from and how does it happen?

Public art refers to any contribution made by an artist or artists in a publicly accessible location. As such it can encompass the fine and applied arts, soft and hard landscape design, specially crafted street furniture, ceramics, prints, lighting, celebrations, performance, mixed media and artist in residence schemes.

The benefits of public art are diverse and include enhancing the quality of the environment, the saleability of the development, improved orientation and interpretation for the locality and affirming local distinctiveness.

The commissioning of public art works within the sub-region is set to continue. The recent Cambridgeshire Horizons arts and cultural strategy placed public art within the context of the national, regional and local planning control processes, as well as the Government’s Sustainable Communities Plan and a Treasury-driven approach to policy.

Inclusion of public art in spatial planning policy marks a shift in appreciation and there is now a greater understanding of the value of arts intervention in the built and social environment. This shift may be traced to the early 1980s when the Arts Council, with reduced government funding, advised local authorities to adopt a North American approach to financing arts in public places. Per cent for art resulted in a large number of new artist commissions and, in the larger cities, the forming of public art units within council planning and leisure departments.

From the mid nineties the arts lottery fund accelerated the move towards art in public places, typified in the popular imagination by Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North which was part of the regeneration of the north east of England. Today most areas engaged in regeneration or growth would expect to commission public art in some form as a matter of course. The East of England Development Agency’s proposal for a ‘Bridge of Reeds’ over the A14 at Fen Ditton can be seen as an example.

Councils without a public art officer generally rely on

an arts development officer, if they have one, to translate public art into a development control mechanism. The first art works in the villages of South Cambridgeshire – including the Comberton memorial (2002) by Mel Fraser and the Harlton village sign (2002) by William Garfitt and Cambridge Carving Workshop – were match-funded by the district council against funds raised by the parish council. In new building developments, public art is reliant on developers’ contributions.

In Cambourne the agreement between the Council and the developers was signed before the formation of an arts service (in 1994) and consequently evidence of arts facilities or public art is thin on the ground. Notable exceptions are the Morrison’s commission Flight (2003)

by Richard Thornton and Antonia Hockton, the Icosahedron (2004), made for the Business Park by Taslim Martin and the village markers by Martin Heron (2005).

Both the success of the village projects and the lack of a vigorous approach at Cambourne led to council approval of a public art policy (with a percent for art mechanism of 1-5%) in February 2004.

In contrast to Cambourne, the public art at the 900 home Arbury Park development is being achieved through partnership between the Council and Gallagher Estates.

Together they sought ways to embed an artist in the design group and to influence the master planning process, integrating arts features into the whole but it was only due to the intervention of Ben Koralek of shape Cambridge that the artist Patricia Mackinnon Day was appointed a few months before the signing of the section 106 agreement.

This collaboration – supported by the visual art agency Commissions East – led to the artist’s Shared Vision scheme.

A photographer (Richard Heeps) has been appointed to record the process and a community artist will be contracted to work closely with the new Arbury Park community development worker and new residents on a range of public art projects including a ‘seasons’ trail that relates to the orchards and fruit making industry that thrived on the site until the 1970s. Mackinnon-Day and other artists will produce works for the central square, the hotel, the school and the guided bus stops.

The most urgent issue for planning authorities in the field of public art is the ad-hoc approach, different across local authorities and regional offices of the Arts Council.

Standards of good practice and government-supported recommendations would help promote an improved public understanding of artistic practice and the desire to reshape traditional notions of identity, public space and community.

Help is at hand in the form of ixia, a national think tank for public art. Its aim is to provide an objective view of the factors that affect the quality of artists’ work in the public realm by undertaking research and enabling debate. English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency, is working with ixia on developing new guidelines for improved public art practice. With any luck, it will be in time for the development of Northstowe, the planned new town six miles north of Cambridge where the lead developer is…English Partnerships. Watch this space.

Andy O’Hanlon Arts Development Officer to SCDC

letters... Cambridge Station May I take exception to some of the implications of your excellent article on the issues surrounding the Richard Rogers’ planning application? (CAg53 Rebranding Cambridge). There is a presumption against ‘metropolitan scale of thinking’ and assumption that anything like it will prejudice ‘the vernacular setting of surrounding settlements.’ The most lively new piece of Cambridge, the old Cattle Market site nearby, is now resplendent with its blue-brown hotel and packed leisure centre, and will become even more vibrant when a large rail-side apartment block complete with Gotham City cornerpenthouse opens. An adjoining cosy building in lime-green trim looks distinctly tired. It’s too late to do Slow Cambridge (cf. the Italian contra-growth movement). An open culture for what is a growth economy need not fear loss of its congeniality. Those parts of the city will be defended. The station area does not need village-scale planning or comfortable Disney-vernacular. The rural hinterland of retreat, Colleges and delicate scale of urban ‘passages’ have their own identity. This station ‘Gateway’ site, and possibly Mitcham’s Corner are relatively intense sites requiring urban architecture; the Elizabeth Way – Maid’s Causeway nexus is an urbanistic disaster.

Unlike other 19th century patrician landowners who had their private stations built near their stately homes, the Cambridge Colleges managed to banish the station far from the town. And unlike Oxford, there were no broad roads. Cambridge continues to suffer from both: a distant railway and narrow, labyrinthine streets. The Bus Station is a cancer in the centre, pulling long distance transport and threatening quality of life. But people must be able to move. Increasing building activity and servicing (a new restaurant and office every month?) add to day-long congestion. Rising temperatures cause rubbish to rot and waste disposal in the centre seems archaic: in the Market Square unhygienic. How can the city of Palma, Majorca, already have a compressed-air, underground, piped-waste system throughout its medieval core? How can it be currently building a transport interchange linking buses, trains and metro? A historic city of only 300,000 building a brand-new under-ground railway system?

The problem with proposals for Cambridge station is not one of vernacular or metropolitan scale. It is that the thinking is not big enough. We do not necessarily need a 14-storey megastructure like Kyoto, or a New York Port Authority bus station, but at least an 8-10 floor building is called for. It could integrate all transport, provide parking and offices (perhaps convertible long-term to homes). It could bridge the tracks and help heal the split between the two halves of the city. Critically the railway would gain a low-level link to the Market Place, part of a new line connecting a new Addenbrookes Station, North Cambridge and Chesterton sidings new sub-centre, possibly linking with the east-west line. Problems of bus access, probably over existing track, could be solved by electronic signalling.

Cambridge is the centre of an economic region of 1 million. But it is a Potempkin City, a Stealth City. It pretends to be a market town, a Bury St Edmunds, set in a village hinterland. That there is a planning application for, say, 10 office blocks is not all bad: it may be a sign of astute self-interest but it is an expression of economic reality. We should be taking advantage of this to correct the transport deficiencies that really do threaten both the quality of life which makes Cambridge so attractive, and continued economic success.

John Sergeant

Tucked away in Covent Garden, lies one of Cambridge’s most interesting housing developments. At the opposite end of the scale from the Countryside Properties/ Fielden Clegg Bradley et al Accordia development off Brooklands Avenue, Nicholas Ray Associates have developed a pair of houses in part of their car park. The houses’ ‘green’ credentials are seen by letting agents Russell & Co as a distinct ‘plus point’.

Like so many small plots scattered around our towns and villages, this was a problematic site. It was small with space for off-road car parking spaces but no gardens, the scale of the street suggested no more than two stories, and there were issues of overlooking. The outcome is a highly specific design – but one which incorporates an approach to urban (and village) housing that could be applied elsewhere.

The section – two stories respect the street scale – rising to the rear for a third floor and terrace. Frame construction maximises the parking area and provides long-term flexibility.

None of the walls is loadbearing. Only the stairs and service duct are fixed. With average house replacement rates at about 200 years, this is a robust and adaptable solution.

In contrast to the current fashion for timber-frame – and hence low thermal mass – these houses employ a high mass solution offering the occupants a far greater degree of comfort. Mass is provided – by concrete floor slabs with a screed incorporating heating pipes on top and exposed soffits below. The metal-framed external walls are insulated both between the studs and on their face.

Heating water is warmed by a heat pump using the natural heat energy of the ground. Each house has a 45 metre deep water-filled loop, which, on the same principle as a refrigerator, uses electricity to move heat from the ground to the house. The process can be reversed in summer. Without a heat pump, a direct electric heater would use 1 kWh of electricity to produce 1 kWh of heat. With a pump, 1 kWh of electricity produces 4kWh of heat – 1 kWh from the electricity and 3 kWh from the ground. This non-polluting system is cheaper than a condensing gas boiler. The SAP rating for the most exposed of the two houses is 108, slightly better than ‘Best’, and the carbon index is 10/10.

The frame construction allows flexibility in facing materials. Brick external walls respond to the context while the rear walls are mainly clad in western red cedar. The roof and part of the end wall is clad in stainless steel. Windows are finished externally in stove-enamelled aluminium.

Planning allows for a ground floor study/office or child/guest/ lodger’s bedroom Upper floors provide a sense of space and quality of light that completely belies the location.

Unlike so much new housing room sizes and shapes are appropriate. The small, protected east-facing roof terrace just outside the kitchen/dining area is a magical place. And internal finishes and details have a quality rare in accommodation of this kind.

Letting agents report that tenants are increasingly looking for high quality ‘green’ accommodation. Will small land owner/developers get the message?

URBAN HOUSING PROTOTYPE Nicholas Ray Associates own housing-to-let suggests a standard for ecologically responsible small scale housing developments. Peter Carolin reports

cross section Architects: Nicholas Ray Associates Structural engineers: Andrew Firebrace Partnership Services Engineers: Max Fordham LLP Quantity Surveyors: Sheriff Tiplady Main Contractor: Buildmark Further details www.nray-arch.co.uk

letters...

SOUL IN Richard Morrison’s article ‘When a house is more than just a home’ (Times 2 16 May) reminded me of ideas I have long wrestled with: for example, why do we Brits love to buy and live in old cottages, expensive to maintain and heat, often uncomfortably draughty and cold, frequently invite injury with low headroom and challenging stairs?

I think his word SOUL goes a long way to explain the phenomenon: we desire the continuity of life that emanates from homes that have been around for a while whereas the French seem only too happy to sell us dilapidated historic structures in order to move into shiny new ones! Morrison commented ‘we are becoming a society ever chasing newness – new gadgets, new clothes, even new bodies…’ yet in the gentrification of places like Shoreditch ‘the housing.. is not new. It isn’t shiny.’

There is another aspect to ‘soul’ see for example Alain de Botton’s new book ‘The Architecture of Happiness’ in which he has chapter titles such as ‘Talking Buildings’ and ‘Ideals of Home’. I also believe that qualities such as the textures and natures of materials are hugely important – concrete is often described as ‘lifeless’ – in contrast to timber, thatch, stone.

A further image of Soul in Architecture that interests me is the impact on our psyche: recently I went to a stimulating jazz concert in the new auditorium at Fitzwilliam College, by Allies & Morrison, a structure that could be described as competent modernist in style, with excellent craftsmanship, good acoustics and relatively expensive materials. More recently I had the pleasure of attending a classical music concert in the old Refectory of Bellapais Abbey in Turkish Cyprus, a lofty 6-bay gothic vaulted structure with rough stone walls and simple ribs circa 1200AD. I’m not suggesting age equals virtue but with hindsight I claim the latter has ‘soul’, which heightened the joy of the experience, whereas the former auditorium is, in a way, ‘soul-less’.

Another example is the Library extension at Girton, also by Allies and Morrison, again elegantly constructed in good quality materials with pleasant views out. But it was the Library designed by Waterhouse in the 1920s, with marvellous oak arched roof, and furniture all designed by the architect, I find more stimulating than the new extension; it has soul.

Fortuitously, in CA 53 David Raven mentions some of the same issues: he claims ‘We now look for growth in an evolutionary way, without sweeping away everything that has gone before. We enjoy the sense of history in a place, the sense that it has been used and worked by others before us.’ And in his review of Magdalene’s Cripps Court he applauds the robust character of the Gallery with its heavy oak structure and also touches upon the surface relief and complexity of pattern in the exterior cladding.

I suggest Shakespeare’s dictum ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…’ is certainly true when we come to make our homes: we seem to need to set up house in the comforting carapace of history.

Michael Walton

Photo: Dennis Gilbert

ARCHITECTURE

FITZWILLIAM COLLEGE: A Snail’s Tale The original buildings at Fitzwilliam College were designed by Denys Lasdun and built in 1960-3. The spiral form (postrationalised by Lasdun into a snail) had its entrance in the centre of the site accessed from Storeys Way across a broad forecourt, went out first west then north towards Huntingdon Road then back down the east side. It was to barrel past the Grove, an elegant Regency house, probably demolishing it in the process but development was curtailed by the unexpected longevity of the Grove’s occupant. Instead, in the 1980s, the college decided to break from the Lasdun masterplan commissioning MacCormac Jamieson & Pritchard to design the next range on the west. Belonging to MacCormac’s ‘stick’ period New Court continued the Lasdun palette and the double band concrete string course, albeit with pitched roofs but the L-shaped block still left the college without a proper route in from Storeys Way. There followed a better MacCormac addition, the exquisite chapel, arguably the best small building in Cambridge, built in the centre of the site in 1991, and in 1994 van Heyningen & Haward finally laid Lasdun’s plan to rest, positing Wilson Court, an odd pair of Stirlingesque blockhouses in the south east corner. But, as is usually the case when masterplans are cast aside, much more interesting things were happening. In mollusc terms the ‘snail’ pattern had become more of an oyster, with the Grove for grit; its lush, almost private, garden the fertile bed for, well

Above: Block plan Below: Theatre section

Photo: Peter Cook

let’s call them pearls: first the chapel, now Allies and Morrison’s new theatre - and, redefining the edge on Storeys Way (the shell perhaps?), their Gatehouse block.

The most noticeable thing about these two buildings, both by the same office and built at the same time in 2003-4, is that they are quite different, an approach that would have been inconceivable 40 years ago. This continues a philosophy used by A&M at the Sidgwick site (CAg51) where two teams came up with radically different buildings. Here at Fitzwilliam again both buildings display the now-familiar A&M language of impeccable detailing and interlocking overlapping rectangles, but being opposite each other the contrast is more startling: the Gatehouse all purple brick, white masonry and Douglas Fir; the Theatre creamy yellow and steely grey. The explanation, that the theatre is a pavilion and needs to look like the Grove while the Gatehouse is a perimeter building and so follows the Lasdun palette, works up to a point but it is a little wilful. In fact the two new buildings are like jealous siblings, competing with each other in a way that probably brings out the best in each of them…is this evidence of some kind of ‘tough love’ incentive policy between the teams at A&M? The Gatehouse contains offices, student rooms, the Porters’ Lodge and the new main entrance, signalled by a hovering glass cube and flash of pristine white stone. Inside is a lofty, complex space with timber panelling, a view of the copper beeches beyond, the stair not in the obvious place but pushed well back behind pigeon holes and lift lobby.

Volumes interlock and overlap, intersected by the principal route through to the rest of the college - once more signalled with white concrete and stone - and by bridges above, a place for interaction and chance meetings, architecturally rich without being showy. The student rooms above have highly articulated bays with timber ventilators and broad window seats, all contained and regulated by razor sharp white concrete string courses.

The Gatehouse reintroduces Lasdun’s cloister, or at least another fragment of it, and after a short walk under cover you are ejected somewhat abruptly into the garden.

Opposite is the Theatre, reached by dogleg path between the beech trees. It is a low structure, the college did not want it to dominate, and when you turn into the auditorium the solution is revealed: the space drops away, deep into the Cambridge boulder clay, the ground level on either side clearly visible through the wide windows as you sink beneath it. It is exciting to feel the section working with such clarity and have light and landscape still washing through what could have been just another subterranean lecture theatre.

The large foyer links powerfully with the outside too, the walls vanishing Farnsworth House fashion. Beyond the huge areas of glass (would these be possible post-2006 Build Regs?) is a moat of reeds, not completely convincing but preserving the illusion of the foyer being part of the garden.

The interior quotes Louis Kahn’s Centre for British Art at Yale cleverly and affectionately, panels of flush American oak juxtaposed with fabulously smooth grey concrete and corner columns concealed in corners lightening the structure.

The rich red of the acoustic panels is revealed behind the white flaps like the lining of an expensive jacket and bleacher seating retracts to provide a multi-purpose floor; the badminton court marked out in black, like Japanese fretwork,

Gatehouse entrance

it too appearing part of the design. Everything is in harmony, the only jarring element being the projection screen perched uncomfortably on the balustrade.

Is may come as a surprise to learn that buildings of such refinement were procured on a Develop and Construct basis.

Build quality is clearly something both architects and client care deeply about and novating the architect to contractors Marriots quite late in the procurement process was key to ensuring design control. There are few outward signs of this being anything less than completely successful, the landscaping around the entrance perhaps being one, but overwhelmingly these buildings are a testament to the architects’ skill and the college’s enlightened patronage.

The next phase will be a new Library by Edward Cullinan, probably between the Grove and Lasdun’s eastern block. Why not Allies & Morrison? Perhaps the process was not as smooth as the urbane elegance of the final product suggests.

Jeremy Lander

Architect : Allies & Morrison Structure/Services: Whitbybird Contractors: Marriots Quantity Surveyor: Dearle and Henderson

Theatre Interior

Theatre and Grove Photo: Dennis Gilbert

Photo: Dennis Gilbert

Cambridge is far from pedestrian friendly

A CITY’S FACE IS ITS FORTUNE An American in Cambridge Cambridge’s good looks probably always mattered economically, but surely not with the urgency of today, when its university must compete with Harvard, its tech firms with Silicon Valley, and its tourism with every pretty town around the world. In this ruthlessly competitive, global age even the most attractive city must think about its assets and deploy them well. Enterprises are highly mobile and have many choices for location and relocation. As planner Peter Salins says, in a post-industrial era, a city’s face becomes its fortune.

And for few cities is this more relevant than Cambridge—big enough to be urban, but small enough to be seriously harmed by overly aggressive buildings and poor planning decisions.

And yes, agreed, what is a bad building to one person may be a beauty to another. This is probably particularly true of Modernist buildings—abundant in Cambridge—which in the 20th century were often embraced by intellectuals as progressive and liberating even as many citizens thought them just plain hostile and ugly. But the fundamental issue is not so much individual, controversial buildings as the urban fabric that they so often rend. After all, it’s the urban fabric— the soul of a city—that ultimately matters, both to current residents and to those pondering a future there.

Yet Cambridge’s soul is fairly difficult to grasp. It does not announce itself at its borders, American billboard style (“Welcome to Chicago,” Richard J. Daley, mayor). It has no understandable centre, no one agreed-upon communal spot for public and political activities. Outside the colleges, Cambridge is far from pedestrian-friendly—no flâneur-like Parisian strolling here, as trucks and bikers barrel down on mothers and children. And immense swaths of property are off limits to anyone without university privileges. Cambridge is one of the least transparent of Western cities—rather as if its walled medieval heritage still dominated its conception of itself.

But it has one immense asset that helps compensate for these planning weaknesses: it has the Cam, which provides a unity and a comprehension of the city that would otherwise be elusive. Just as New York City is unthinkable without Central Park, Cambridge—at least for outsiders—is unthinkable without public access to the Cam. The Cam yields the understanding that the lovely fens lead to Grantchester at one end, or to Magdalene College and Jesus Green beyond at the other. Without the Cam, slicing through the exclusive territory of the colleges, crucial geographic markings are incomprehensible because so much property on the map cannot be walked. And nearly all cities, even automobileoriented ones like Los Angeles, are best understood by the walker.

Cambridge’s major streets—Queen’s Road, Fen Causeway, even Trumpington and Sidney Streets—are more like highways than roads, distributing traffic and pedestrians

like commodities. (Cambridge’s planners should seriously consider as their strategic motto the old 1960s rallying cry of lefty student demonstrators: Take back the streets. Or, at least planner Jane Jacobs’s admonition to keep blocks short.)

But the Cam yields the hidden riches of Cambridge, beginning, if one heads out from Scudamore’s, with the sublime Mathematical Bridge. The entire mythical story of 19th century engineers being unable to reassemble the 1749 bridge is, everyone agrees, hokum, but that Cambridge could even produce such renowned stories adds to its mystical allure. The bridge links a 1460 building, said to be the oldest on the river, to a parking area and Queens’ Cripps Court—a jarring disjunction. Unrelieved by landscaping or any softening of its aggressive white exterior, the squat, flat-topped, concrete Cripps Court defies its surroundings. It could be sited in any mid-sized city anywhere. But it’s not just anywhere. It’s the assertively mundane quality that is so discouraging, especially since Queens’ magnificent mid-16th century Cloister Court cannot be glimpsed. Knowing how disappointed their customers often are with this bleak landscape, the punt guides like to volunteer, incorrectly, that Queens’ Cripps building is listed, and cannot be demolished or even substantially changed.

Then the treasures start passing slowly, revealing the Cam’s origin as a highway of commerce and delivery that runs parallel to King’s Parade—or so it must be if King’s College is here. That the Cam and Trumpington Street are corresponding passages—much like New York’s Hudson River and Broadway or Chicago’s lakefront and State Street— only becomes clear on the Cam itself, rather than on the street, because so many links between them, for visitors, are blocked.

One quiet treasure on the Cam is relatively new: Trinity Hall’s four-storey, many-windowed Jerwood Library, opened in 1999. It backs onto the river, but in the most charming way, rather like a ship that has just fastidiously docked. It fits cozily into its surroundings, and while it’s clearly of its time, it defers—without sycophancy—to its far older neighbors. Its loveliness is impressive and unusual among major university and college libraries, whose undeniable needs for space have resulted in their being among the most antagonistic of new buildings in academic cities around the world, intimidating their neighbors with blocky, Brutalist designs supposedly justified by the demands of technology.

And while the Jerwood Library will only be seen by most visitors from the Cam, it signals profound hope for Cambridge’s future. It demonstrates that a technologically advanced building can be erected in a tight space, on a historical site, meeting the needs of the 21st century, yet asserting a Cambridge uniqueness. Where else would it be built? It’s of its time and place, and will age gracefully, respecting its past as it helps its college move into the future.

But what of the rest of Cambridge? Will it hold onto the historic qualities that make it so attractive—and economically competitive? Cambridge needs development—new housing, hotels, Class-A offices, and commerce to retain and expand its strong economic base—always a tenuous matter in today’s world. Its huge urban renewal project has all the signs of dreary commercial modernism, especially if the 1980s Crowne Plaza, the last new building to be built in the area, is a forerunner of things to come. Squeezed gracelessly onto a tiny site that it shares with a public parking garage, the Crowne Plaza could hardly have been more poorly designed.

Some signals of market weakness in Cambridge have started. Library House, which tracks innovative firms for investors, just announced that growth in Cambridge’s technology firms has stalled. Investment in the 973 companies that make up the Cambridge Cluster fell from 154 million in 2004 to 125 million last year. One culprit: competition from London, which is where many top management firms want to be. Cambridge can’t compete with London head on, but it can compete on its own terms—quality of life, local beauty and heritage, celebrated university, and thoughtful development.

Jerwood Library or Crowne Plaza? The choices are clear.

Julia Vitullo-Martin Julia Vitullo-Martin (pictured left) is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a Director of the Center for Rethinking Development and a visiting lecturer to Cambridge.

VOICES FROM THE SHED shape-cambridge (now shape-east) launched a new initiative during last summer’s Architecture Week with its panel discussion "Spaces In between - what makes a city” when three speakers delivered presentations to a full house at the Junction. Unfortunately the speakers were not constrained to short, stimulating introductions to the issues of the evening and instead the audience suffered lengthy, sometimes recondite, deliveries followed by discussion that neither gelled with its principal actors nor caught fire with its audience. All the more shame in that it was evident that there were indeed ideas and issues of profit to the discourses of this city, but what counts is that it happened. It is crucial to the cultural well-being of Cambridge that public debate should be an ongoing feature of city life - only in this way can a discourse of civic value evolve around the creation and formation of public space to counter the rampant commercialism that has descended upon us.

Behind Malcolm Miles’ presentation lay a body of urban theory outlined in his paper ‘Interruptions: Testing the Rhetoric of Culturally Led Urban Development’. His thesis is that since the '80s the cultural industry has gained a key role in strategies dealing with urban problems, seen as able to provide a new economic base in post-industrial settings. In citing cases of how city authorities and developers alike are captivated by cultural projects he, along with increasing dissent in the arts world, questions the rhetoric of the cultural industry and suggests that alternative approaches are necessary.

Underlying this is the belated interest of government in the social worth of culture, harking back to their recognition of the contribution of pop music to the GNP. New approaches to culturally orientated policy are evident in the redevelopment of the Cattlemarket, locus of the Spaces In between event.

Branded as "Cambridge Leisure", it is grounded in creating a specific venue for popular culture and entertainment, with the accent on a younger generation lifestyle. The Junction and its new adjunct served as catalysts for regeneration of an area whose elements are conspicuously about consumption and a market-directed co-option of cultural activity.

Foodie culture and diverse ethnic culinary tastes are recognised components of metropolitan life, and it figures strongly in the complex, albeit biased towards fast food and short in authenticity. Coherence in urban policy is not obvious. The redevelopment of the Cattlemarket symbolises the official motivation in the creation of new public space, away from the substance of architecture and urban design (risk of gentrification) towards new de-aestheticised readings of the term 'design'. Miles raised a range of issues relevant to the Cambridge scene, including the conflicts between 'high' culture and popular access. Aside from the scepticism over commodification of culture there are concerns about the longterm effects of ageist ghettoes, whatever the justification for positive discrimination.

The alternative approaches necessary to urban regeneration that Miles cites include a variety of social, political and activist forms centred on resistance to the agenda of arts funding bodies - which are seen as following the agenda of politicians and funders too closely. Some verge on the subversive as a means of expropriating cultural power, sometimes under the guise of community based work. It is interesting to compare the Architecture Week Hoardings project (described in this issue) with the more hard-hitting dialectical work of some London-based groups, using billboards to exercise cultural power in public space. The work of 'citizen artists' liberating advertising hoardings (featured in Naomi Klein's No Logo) could counter some of the gratuitous propaganda currently gracing the Station area.

Possibly the most relevant comment refers to the highly competitive environment of urban space, in which culture-led regeneration can be divisive unless developed alongside social policy stemming from a vigorous and democratic political process, representative of the wider culture of the city.. Miles doubts that this condition exists.

CL

EASTERN PROMISE What does the mysteriously named Inspire East actually do? Executive Director Gwyneth Jones briefed Peter Carolin ‘Breckland House – A better place, a brighter future’ states the name board on the high wall that encloses Breckland District Council’s Thetford offices. It sounds an appropriate way of announcing what is also the home of the regional development agency, EEDA, and its offshoot, Inspire East.

Marooned on an unpromising site near the edge of the town centre, protected by a high wall and designed with a token nod to the local vernacular, the chunkily compact form of Breckland House is an exemplar of neither accessible administration nor appropriate design. Internally, the combination of an unmanned reception area, a poorly conceived circulation system and the universal application of swipecard door controls must make it a nightmare for visitors – it certainly did for me. It seems an odd home for an organisation which is meant to be improving standards of design.

Welcoming me to her attic office, Gwyn Jones, Inspire East’s executive director, couldn’t have been more apologetic. She comes from Newcastle where she completed a five year town and country planning degree but has worked almost entirely in East Anglia, for Suffolk Rural Community Council and Broadland Distict Council and then for Norwich City. She’s done a lot of community work and her forte is regeneration. As regeneration manager at Norwich, she was heavily involved in the transformation of the Chapelfield area after Nestlé’s factory closed with the loss of 900 jobs.

Inspire East, she explains, has its origins in the regional centres of excellence first proposed by Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force and later brought into being by the ODPM as a way of improving standards and securing feedback on the plethora of Prescott-promoted programmes. Funded mainly

by EEDA, Jones reports to an Advisory Board jointly chaired by an architect and a journalist, Yasmin Sharif and Paul Burrell.

‘Inspire East’s principal task’, says Jones, ‘is to improve both the quality of places for living and working as well as the means by which this is achieved. The Egan review of skills for creating sustainable communities made it clear that, although each of the professions concerned are competent in their own fields, they were not good at the generic skills of community engagement, visioning and project management. Our job is to enhance those skills.’

The geographical scale of the operation is formidable, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. It ranges from the effects created by the restructuring of agriculture; the decline of fishing, ports and seaside holidays; and industrial relocation. But it’s not all about managing and transforming decline – activity in the Cambridge sub-region is all about explosive growth. So how are Jones and her nine-strong team answering the challenge?

‘We have four “building blocks” of activity’ she explains. ‘First, there is knowledge management – pointing people to the best sources of information. Second, there is brokering and enabling – developing networks in which experience can be shared across professional and other boundaries.

Third, skills development – we are not a provider but assist in the sponsorship and development of new training programmes. Finally, we are encouraging best practice – through both our design review panels and our enabling service, both of which are based on the CABE models.’

Within the Cambridge sub-region, Inspire East has been working closely with Cambridge Horizons to develop, with the Urbed consultancy, a ‘quality charter’ aimed at local authorities, landowners and developers. It also sponsored Shape East’s recent urban design seminar for members and officers in the City. Led by the Urban Design Group’s Rob Cowan, this was a pilot for further seminars.

I try to discover what Jones thinks of Cambourne. Her reply is tactful. ‘The housebuilders bought large chunks of land and did their own thing. As an imposed development it lacked the political leadership to ensure high quality. The important thing is that we should learn from it.’ And what about the fact that increasing amounts of the planning process are being farmed out to consultants? ‘Well, it’s making it very difficult for the remaining local authority planners. They have to manage more and more consultancy contracts and often lack the necessary mix of in-house skills.’

What message might Jones pass on to architects? ‘Architects … (pause) … some architects think they are the only people who know all about design. They should realise there are others – such as landscape architects and highway engineers – who have a real contribution to make towards the creation of good places.’ It is significant that the design review panel chair is an urban designer and his deputy a landscape architect.

Whenever I’ve heard Jones speaking at meetings and seminars I’ve always been struck by her fluency. She is politely horrified at the suggestion that she is a master of the vocabulary of the moment.

‘I can’t stand the vagueness of the term “sustainable communities” and I normally show a picture of a milk float when I talk about “local delivery vehicles”. We are developing a jargon buster for our website – one problem is that different professions use the same jargon in totally different ways.’ This sounds a very good idea and not unconnected with the comments which Sian Reid, Cambridge City’s Architecture Champion, made in Cag 53.

Working in the interstices of the regeneration and development process, somewhere between local authorities, other quangos and the “development industry” must be tough – especially in a huge and hugely diverse region like ours. To be observed to be ‘making a difference’ (a Blairite term) must be what Jones and her team long for. My hunch is that it’s beginning to happen. Let us hope that they are given the chance to go the full distance.

MUDDLE ENGLAND

THE HOARDINGS PROJECT 2006 The Hoardings Project formed the core of the CAAs’ Architecture Week activities for 2006. The idea of using building site hoardings as a canvas was quickly seized upon: the initial concept of graffiti soon formalised into a more sober option of stencilling. Shape Cambridge became involved and “1nsight 0nsite” was born, an overall banner for CAA’s AW2006 activities including a launch event, a lecture (The Spaces In Between: What Makes a City) and two new Shape Walks "Change in the City" and "Cambridge Past, Present and Future" in the form of podcasts.

To generate the quotes workshops run by artists Townley & Bradby were held with the CAA, Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge City Council Disability Panel, Red Hen Project: Asian Women's Group and Chesterton Community College. These explored how we experience everyday journeys and personal space in relation to the built environment of Cambridge. The workshops were filmed by Susanne Jasilek as part of “Talking Cities” her architecture week commission from Shape Cambridge. Quotes such as “I would love it if all the world’s paths were made of marble” (Wheelchair user) and “One of the nice things about Cambridge is that you can have serenity and bustle, and it’s all within a half mile walk” were destined to sit alongside quotes such as “Less is More” (Mies van der Rohe), “I Call Architecture Frozen Music” (Goethe) and “When we build, let us think we build forever” (John Ruskin).

We needed time given generously by CAA members and RIBA East and also funding from businesses, Art Groups and Contractors. Initial funding from the CFCI, Gallagher Estates and The Arts Council kick started the process.

Architecture Week was 10 years old last year and we looked for a corresponding number of sites for the event. The most dominant current projects are The Grand Arcade and Bradwell’s Court and it was important to get at least one of these. Grosvenor Estates (Grand Arcade) generously gave us two hoardings on their site. SDC Construction were unable to give us use of Bradwell’s Court but special thanks goes to them for generously sponsoring the event instead.

Corpus Christi and Newnham College offered their sites on Trumpington Road and Sidgwick Avenue and thanks to contractors Haymills and Bluestone these sites were secured. The Chemistry Department were undertaking Phase 2 of their laboratory refurbishment but no hoardings were erected. Undeterred, Marriotts Construction not only agreed to participate, but also constructed temporary hoardings along Lensfield Road for the quotes. Considering we were only asking contractors to paint the hoardings Marriotts truly went beyond the call of duty!

Two great “alternative” sites were The Red House on Station Road and Purbeck House. The Red House had no hoardings but the windows had been blocked up. These were painted bright yellow and the text spray-painted on, mostly during a rowdy world-cup football match televised on Parker’s Piece. The result was the disapproval of England supporters asking why we were painting the building Brazilian Yellow! The position of Purbeck House was ideal as the text could be read from passing trains.

Both Chrissie Charlton (Graphic Design) and Roger Tongue of Urban Sign Solutions (lettering) worked to tight deadlines to get the hoardings ready. This included applying text to The Grand Arcade at 5am on a Sunday morning as the site was on busy junction. The overall result was a highprofile, highly visible public artwork exhibition which achieved its aim of provoking debate about Cambridge and its built environment. Following the success of Architecture Week 2006 the CAA are planning an event for 2007 which will be dedicated to Ben Koralek (see obituary in this issue). Ben’s enthusiasm for the built environment has ensured close involvement by Shape Cambridge in Architecture Week and a huge “thank you” goes out to Ben on behalf of us all.

Anthony Cooper photographer Damien Gillie Funding Partners: Arts Council, East; Cambridge City Council; Cambridgeshire Horizons; Commissions East; CFCI Sponsors: Bluestone plc; CMC Architects; Cowper Griffiths Associates; Freeland Rees Roberts; Gallagher Estates; Granta Housing Society Ltd; Grosvenor Estates Ltd; Haymills (Contractors) Ltd; Integrated Building Services; Kettle’s Yard; Marriott Construction; Ridgeons; RH Partnership; RMJM; Saunders Boston; SDC Construction Group; whitbybird; University of Cambridge.

A decision to be a fly on the wall at the East of England annual conference last June Delivering Growth Sustainably, resulted in an image of a bureaucracy in entropy. Its sub title - delivering growth in an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable way - embodied the dilemma of speaker after speaker, struggling to define the specificity of sustainability and growth; plainly there was none although an impression was conveyed of a slow but progressive emergence of a regional mindset adjusting to loose central government agendas. Rational growth management is now represented in a Regional Partnership Group offering a joined-up approach to regional governance. It sets the context for advice on funding allocations and presents a single voice hopefully carrying more weight in Westminster.

Adoption of the East of England Plan is due this Spring, covering planning issues up to 2021, but it has been upstaged by government focus on growth grounded in a reconceptualisation of the Eastern Region, linked to three growth areas of economic dynamism: the Milton Keynes/South Midlands area; Thames Gateway; and the London/Stansted/ Cambridge/Peterborough corridor. Other contenders have been hoovered into so called Growth Points – Norwich; the Haven Gateway; and Thetford/Breckland. These stratagems underlie central government's targets for new housing (45,000 new units in the Cambridge sub region by 2016) already informing developmental regimes irrespective of Regional Planning Guidance.

Henry Cleary, spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government (formerly ODPM), in giving the keynote address, placed the development of Northstowe and North Arbury within the history of planned growth in the East of England, from garden cities and new towns to the Cambridge Structure Plan/Regional Planning Guidance 6; regrettably there was no connection with what is happening today. Growth area funding is being allocated up to 2008 and there is to be a greater devolution in which funding streams can be prioritised by regional preference. In acknowledging the need to ensure that infrastructure will be provided to support housing and population growth, Cleary could only point to the Treasury's Cross-cutting Comprehensive spending review, which is only now being set up for assessing priorities across the country. So much for planned growth!

Amongst other issues for the region he recognised that the regional machinery for implementation is not yet established. Something the government will be looking for in its imminent review of Local Delivery Vehicles (Cambridgeshire Horizons not Tescos) for joint working across administrative boundaries. LDVs are intended to link regional delivery with central government policy, except for those all-critical interfacing elements: transport and highways. So much, again, for joined up thinking.

The challenge of growth was addressed by the East of England Regional Assembly representative Adrian Cannard: "can we have high rates of economic growth, quick delivery, high quality design, up front infrastructure delivery in socially integrated communities, whilst living within the Region’s environmental limits?" Already practical difficulties are emerging with EERA's proposals to regulate the flow of development; the Panel Report on the East of England Plan proposes an implementation plan between Government and the region, an opportunity to co-ordinate funds according to an overall regional vision.

The Regional Spatial Strategy endorses the Urban Task Force's recommendations for urban concentration, with a commitment to reducing the need for travel. The Regional Transport Strategy will be strengthened to deliver modal shift from private vehicles to public transport.

Cambridge is at the crossroads of two major roads, an international route to the Midlands and a north-south major route and it is very important that traffic and the economy keeps moving as well as local people getting into and out of Cambridge. There is an infrastructure deficit and a strong need for significant commitment of resources from the Department of Transport. The east-west links offer poor communication across the region.

In an attempt to inject some vision into the proceedings, David Lock, longstanding consultant masterplanner for Northstowe - and still in shock from English Partnerships' recent hijacking of the project - put a few noses out of joint with his cavalier "bigger picture" consideration of the region. To understand what is happening, he says, we have to recognize the increased geographical weight of the enlarged European Union, the ‘Eastern Sunrise’. A second key is the ‘knowledge highway’ of the Oxford Cambridge Arc, with Cambridge the high tech crucible of the sub-region. This was posed as a counter vision to the London-centric north/south axis concept promulgated by John Prescott.

Lock emphasised the characteristics of the eastern region: market towns as the fulcrum of community life, no industrial cities; renaissant coastal areas; an inhabited countryside. And he used the term ‘amnesia’ for the curiously purposive forgetfulness of past experience in current planning thinking - social development through the associative culture of community activity over decades.

Rather than the impulse to instantly create 'sustainable communities' by government dictat we should learn from the New Towns’ capture of the value of land to invest in infrastructure; acknowledgement that a workable public transport system is only feasible under subsidy.

The presentation by Richard Harrington, East of England English Partnerships, provided substantiation for David Lock's outlook. In the constant flux of current political culture English Partnerships have reinvented themselves as development shock troops, using their quasigovernmental credentials to move in to selected areas, dancing through the bureaucratic muddle to kick-start private sector involvement. They act as enablers to engage in strategic land acquisition and transport infrastructure improvements which aspire to being strategic exemplars.

The significance of Cambridge and the Eastern Region to the national economy is recognized by their adoption of Northstowe as a keystone to expansion in the Cambridge area.

The corrective direction of activities of EP indicates shortcomings in the development process. New planning law introduced in 2004 is already complicated by the controversial Barker Review of Land Use Planning due this Spring, set at speeding-up the planning process. Each new initiative indicates that the short term political world is out of synch with the real time of built environment operations and it is going to take more than the selective reach of EP to handle it.

There seems to be a concern with the building rate to the virtual exclusion of consideration of what we are building. Supporting policies on quality and the nature of development are characterised by their innocence of real design insight and functional needs in any profoundly social sense. Cambridge's Director of Environment and Planning offered that there has been no debate about lifestyle changes consequent upon the scale of growth, the appropriateness of house types etc. Against EERA's claims to setting-up new ways of dealing with people, indications point to the fact that the political establishment is not well connected to civic society. An overriding concern in Cambridge is that major development is being embarked on (Northstowe; Cambridge Station area) before a holistic strategy is in place, and in the absence of a legitimising, open and proactive public debate.

Colen Lumley

Ben Koralek Ben Koralek who died in July 2006 was the first Director of the architecture and built environment centre that became shapeCAMBRIDGE and then shapeEAST. He came to Cambridge from work in London with the Hackney Building Exploratory and Schoolworks – where he had been involved in the Kingswood School Project.

In moving to Cambridge and setting up shape ‘from scratch’, Ben faced a number of significant challenges.

Cambridge is not an easy place to understand. It is necessary to engage with the Region, the sub-Region, the county, the city, the two very different universities, the regional college, the regional development agency and an ever-increasing number of related quangos, the local arts and construction industry organisations as well as shape’s school and community clients. Enough to dismay and intimidate anyone – let alone a complete outsider. In addition architecture and built environment centres are still in their infancy. Each is unique and has to evolve, through trial and error, an appropriate framework; make allies; find both core and project funds; cope with bureaucracy – and deliver the goods. It's incredibly testing work and demands a huge range of skills.

It's a measure of Ben's achievement that shape swiftly became well known in Cambridge and beyond, with a distinctive national reputation for high quality consultation, meaningful public engagement in the built environment and most importantly for work with children.

Ben had a warm and open character but he had a number of other attributes, which were the central qualities of his direction of shape and will be his enduring legacy to that organisation. He also had extraordinary powers of insight. His grasp of the historic, political and planning issues and his concise articulation in plain English - not only what the problem was but how shape might address it - were immediately impressive.

Ben realised that today’s children will be the occupants of the developments, settlements and urban extensions of tomorrow and that they needed to have input now to understand why, how, where and when their homes of tomorrow were to be built. He also saw that parents will listen and respond more attentively to a simple message (about sustainability or transport or design quality) from their children than they will do from any number of worthies in a draughty community centre. This indirect message delivery has been fantastically successful in engaging the broader community in shape’s activities.

Ben was interested in whatever people had to say- not just national or local politicians, and funding bodies, but builders, teachers and children. He made them realise that their thoughts and opinions mattered; that their contribution to the debate was important. This ability to empathise with people, to think and explain things from their position was key to his success in the growth of shape. The testimonies of community and education groups were the first and most effective PR that shape ever had and they are all about Ben. Ben had an infectious enthusiasm for life in general (and his family in particular) and professionally for good architecture, this city and its people, and sustainability – in all its manifestations. But his greatest enthusiasm – his speciality – was working with children – and his approach revolutionised the way that the built environment was thought about and taught about in local schools – making a real mark on the staff with whom he worked as well as the children - and these are still core elements of shape’s education programme.

Finally Ben was boundlessly optimistic, whether discussing his work, the future of shape or his own illness, his refusal to believe that anything less than great would happen was an immense strength.

Ben’s untimely and tragic death is primarily an enormous blow to Vicky, Jenna and the rest of his family. It is also a great blow to shape, the city and its young people, many of whom will never forget the engaging, enthusiastic and utterly un-pompous man who helped them articulate their views, their hopes and their aspirations.

Oliver Smith Left: Ben Koralek in the classroom

HISTORIC CORE APPRAISAL The Cambridge Historic Core Conservation Area Appraisal was approved by Executive Councillor Sian Reid last year, and is now on-line at http://www.cambridge.gov.uk /ccm/content/policy-andprojects/cambridge-historic-coreappraisal.en.

The Historic Core Appraisal is mould-breaking in its content and presentation. Its approach was devised

by Dr Jon Burgess, the Council's Conservation and Design Manager until 2004. It considers the ways in which buildings and spaces are and have been, used and managed. It analyses the present character of historic Cambridge, and how it is changing.

Although cross-referenced to the Cambridge Local Plan 2006 and providing guidance for planning decisions, it has much wider relevance.

It identifies enhancement opportunities, key management issues (in relation to Retail, Commercial, Access and Traffic, Housing, Leisure, and Conservation), and sets out Implementation and Management policies for developments in the public realm. In effect, the whole Appraisal is a conservation management plan, which assesses the significance of key parts of our historic city, identifies their vulnerability to change, and sets out policies for managing change.

The Appraisal has always been envisaged as a web-based document, available as a readily-accessible reference. A particularly innovative feature is the way in which the 80+ individual analyses of Streets and Spaces are presented as individuallydownloadable .pdf's, so that property owners can get "their" bit without having to download the the whole bulky document. The Street analyses are colour-coded, Monopoly-like, according to significance - with red for very high, orange for very high, green for signifcant, and blue for low. Each of the Street Analyses includes a summary of Archaeology and Historic Topography provided by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit with thanks to a grant from English Heritage.

John Preston

CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURE GAZETTE The limited amout of advertising we can obtain does not cover the cost of production and we rely on voluntary subscription or sponsorship. If you are a listed sponsor please renew this by sending a cheque payable to CAA to one of editorial team asap otherwise if you wish to subscribe please send a cheque for an amount you consider is appropriate and your name will be credited. Editors

Cambridge Architecture Post 1945 The Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry is arranging for a new edition of 'Cambridge Architecture Post 1945' (first published December 2000) to be published on their website so that everyone can share in this valuable resource. CFCI invite nominations for projects to be included.

The simple rules are: • projects must have been completed by 31st December 2005 • projects must be within the same geographical area used in the current edition (see page 108) approx 20km radius of Cambridge • the following key information must be provided: • A. Building title: • B. Building owner: • C. Designer: D. Contractor: • • E. Location: • F. Access: G. Other information e.g. this is the second phase of the • project • You must confirm that photographs may be taken by CFCI and that copyright in these will remain with CFCI. The choice of which projects to include will be at the absolute discretion of the editorial board.

Send your nominations to Edward Coe, Secretary CFCI by email by Friday 16th March: email: secretary@cfci.org.uk

CAg53 ERRATA:

COOK CARPENTRY AND

new builds extensions refurbishments listed buildings

BUILDING PROJECTS

All Saints Jubilee Festival article photographer Paul Raeside/BBC Homes & Antiques should have been acknowleged

CF CI E VEN TS MEE TINGS

26th February contact Paul Cook on 6.30 pm 07790 20043 9 tel: 01353 687944 mobile: 20070209-cambridge architecture.qxp 09/02/2007 18:26 Page 1 Fitzwilliam Theatre, Fitzwilliam 9 Kingdon Avenue Prickwillow Ely Cambs CB7 4UL

LONDON BIRMINGHAM BRISTOL CAMBRIDGE EDINBURGH GLASGOW LEEDS MANCHESTER WINCHESTER DUBAI MUMBAI

structural engineering building services engineering fire engineering façade engineering bridge design geotechnical engineering infrastructure & urban engineering transport planning environmental assessment sustainablity & renewables whitbybird, Jupiter House, Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2JD tel 01223 369 220 fax 01223 356 215 email cambridge@whitbybird.com

www.whitbybird.com

College, Cambridge Southern Fringe members £5, non members £10 19th March 6.00 pm Cambridge Union Annual Debate ‘This house believes that Grand Designs are for other people’ speakers include Kevin McCloud and John Selwyn Gummer MP free - booking advisable 23rd March 7.00 for 7.30 pm Great Hall King’s College Annual Dinner (All tickets for this event have now been sold) 23rd April 6.30 pm SmartLIFE Centre (Kings Hedges Road, Cambridge) Sustainable Construction: the Swedish Experience (limited tickets) Further meetings: Mondays 14th May, 4th June and 25th June details to be confirmed VISITS 26th March 6.00 pm Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds Tickets only - full details to be confirmed.

For details and tickets contact : secretary@cfci.org.uk website: www.cfci.org.uk

CA gazette list of current sponsors Cowper Griffith Associates Barber Casanovas Ruffles Ltd Peter Dann Consultants Ltd Lyster Grillet & Harding R.H. Partnership Architects Ltd Christopher Maguire Architects Twitchett Architects Michael Walton Architects Bland Brown & Cole Wrenbridge Land Ltd Kenneth Mark Practice Saunders Boston Archangel Ltd Granta Architects Patrick Ward Architects Feilden & Mawson LLP Freeland Rees Roberts Neale Associates Rosalind Bird Architects Miller Associates Purcell Miller Triton

A review produced by the Cambridge Association of Architects. The views in this gazette are those of the individual contributors and not of the Association.

Copy deadline for CAg 55 is 31 May 2007.

The editors welcome readers’ contributions but reserve the right to edit ISSN 1361-3375 Editorial Group: David Raven co-editor Colen Lumley co-editor Jeremy Lander co-editor John Preston Peter Carolin

Cambridge Architecture gazette c/o 25a Hills Road Cambridge CB2 1NW Tel 01223 366555 Fax 01223 312882 Email jl@frrarchitects.co.uk or mail@dra-architects.demon.co.uk Printed by Bulldog Publishing Ltd, Whittlesford