A NEW GENERATION OF SUSTAINABLE ACCOMODATION FOR STUDENTS AND FELLOWS OF KING'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
Providing 84 comfortable homes for graduates, fellows and their families, Stephen Taylor Court is set within generous gardens and communal areas in a quiet suburb of Cambridge.
As part of the King's College Cambridge estate, the homes needed to be enduring, complementing the Conservation Area setting, and long life. We designed to Passivhaus standards for operational excellence, with lean design principles that would reach net zero for embodied carbon.
Targeting a 100-year design life, we used high-quality materials. The structure is cross-laminated timber, the façade is soft waterstruck gault clay bricks, and handmade plain roof tiles emanate a sense of permanence. These buildings are designed to last.
We love how homey, clean and relaxed it feels, which is thanks to using quality natural materials in neutral colours in a very smart floorplan and great work with light. It’s hardly ever that you have a home which is as equally suited for rest as productive work and study. Amazing place to live!
Michaela, a graduate student living in one of the two-bedroom apartments
COURTS NOT QUADS, CRESCENTS NOT SQUARES
The three crescent terraces form a court that is open to the street and suggests a calm, simple architecture which praises the landscape. A new red brick graduate villa complements the Barton Road elevation and the refurbishment and extension of an existing Victorian Villa as a student commons, completes the accommodation.
The five buildings are set in domestic-scale gardens that offer attractive places to pause, chat, and feel at home.
WHAT’S BETTER THAN NET ZERO CARBON?
Every aspect of the project was measured against the client’s bespoke sustainability matrix, complementing the high standards of Passivhaus performance with a holistic view of sustainability. This matrix demonstrates excellence in health and wellbeing, landscape and nature, water, materials and waste, community and neighbourhood, and construction impacts.
On every level, from site planning to detailing, it embedded the collective knowledge of the practice. It’s really well planned, well executed and well detailed. It is a ‘very confident’ building.
AJ Architecture Awards Judges