CASE STUDY 11
own life,” including shops and communal amenity space alongside quality housing. To achieve this, explained Gavin Henderson, principal director at Stanton Williams, the practice placed a firm focus on “fostering communal life,” with “the spaces between buildings as important as the buildings themselves.”
This is evident when walking through the plentiful public realm in the project. Entering along Eddington Avenue, which has its own dedicated bus route, the new site spreads along to the east, with the 2018 Stirling Prize-winning Storey’s Field Centre to the west – offering locals community rooms of varying sizes, from groups of 20 to 180 people. Residents and visitors then turn east
into the new development, and directly into the Market Square – a large paved pedestrian area surrounded by housing blocks and a dedicated supermarket. While this “could have easily led to a blocked-in, imposing layout,” said the project architects, “long sight-lines through the wide open spaces between the buildings retain the sense of freedom in the square.” Further encouraging this sense of openness, the square “invites the public to linger and commune in the space.” Around these grounds is a large quantity of open seating, which helps host the diverse programme of food outlets and vans that frequent the square, providing a social hub for the site’s users to meet and socialise.
As well as the dining offerings, the Market Square is set to host a range of events, again helping to make it a natural meeting point for its users. The retail offerings too are set to grow, with the Sainsbury’s supermarket and Argos store intended to be supplemented by further retailers in the coming months. Once the sun sets, the Market Square is
lit up with projections including artworks, poems and patterns, all inspired by Cambridge and the history and heritage of its university. As well as a constant flow of images, there are hourly ‘shows’ with interactive artworks to mimic the idea of a town clock – adding further character to the area.
INTO THE COURTS Heading further through the develop- ment, users are led towards the residential blocks, all of which are centred around various ‘courts’ – each of which offer similarly wide open spaces, mitigating any imposition from the build- ings’ heights. These courts – built around a challeng- ing topography of changing heights – rise and fall with the land, which is now easily navigable through a system of slopes and stairs. These are surrounded by carefully hidden waterways to lead surface water towards the site’s various swales – themselves made into a feature in the centre of some of the courts – and abundant planting, all contributing to a fully realised sense of place.
Gavin explained this site design further: “Being former farmland, the site presented interesting opportunities to respond to typography and to exploit the clear change of levels across the site – something that both the masterplan and our scheme have successfully embraced.” As to the residential blocks which are separated by these courts, the buildings are expressed as brick plinths, connected visually with the materials and activities in the landscape.
The building forms are “strongly articu- lated through the use of recessed brick piers and horizontal precast concrete cills,” said the architects, “with the level of detail on different buildings varied to respond to their prominence within the
“CREATING A SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND BELONGING AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE WAS KEY”
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