Cambridge University’s graduate students will soon have a new place to lay their heads, after a 325-room halls of residence was granted planning permission by the council.
This is just the first phase of an urban extension in the university town. Ultimately the development, in north west Cambridge, will include 1,500 homes for university staff, 1,500 homes for private sale, halls for 2,000 postgraduates and 100,000 square meters of space to be used for academic purposes, or research and development. The first phase will cost £280 million to build.
A care home, a hotel and a sports centre are also part of the plan, along with a primary school and supermarket.
Attracting and retaining the best staff is high on the list of reasons for building this town extension, based on comments by Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of Cambridge, on the project’s website. ‘It will provide for much of the research accommodation and many of the homes for staff that the university is likely to need over the next 20 years,’ he says. But it is the first phase of student accommodation that has now been granted planning permission.
Although the extension will be built on greenfield – one of the architects describes the current site as a ‘muddy field’ – it has aspirations towards sustainability. Housing will be built to meet both the BREEAM ‘excellent’ standard, and level five of the code for sustainable homes.
Students charging their iPads and working late into the night will have 20 per cent of their energy energy usage supplied by 800 square meters of solar panels. This is to meet a requirement set by the council.
Speaking to Sustain by phone, Andrew Drummond, an associate at the architectural practice RH Partnership and part of the team of architects who designed the student housing, adds: ‘We are building in the potential for climate change and how the environment will change between now and 2080.’ Planning permission has been granted for solar screens, for example, which could be added to the student housing at a later date to add shade to the building if summer temperatures rise.
The site has been split into lots, with different architects responsible for what will be built in each spot. The architects meet, Mr Drummond explains, to compare notes, but the aim is for the extension to include a variety of styles and not look too uniform. This proved a challenge – as the different architects went away to find a good match to the existing local buildings. ‘Six of the architects came back with the same brick,’ he explains. (This was later fixed by varying the suppliers.)
Although Cambridge University was keen on using local materials in keeping with the local brick buildings, he adds, ‘The best match is Dutch’.
Construction of the site’s infrastructure is scheduled to start in February, with work on the first buildings to begin in October 2014.
