Knights Park

by Pollard Thomas Edwards and Alison Brooks Architects

Client Hill

Award RIBA East Award 2025

The award winner tells us: "Knights Park in Eddington, Cambridge, is a net zero carbon, low-rise, high-density development of 249 homes. This scheme forms a major site within the University of Cambridge’s 150hectare Eddington urban extension; a mixed academic and urban community that includes a primary and nursery school, health centre, hotel, supermarket, and shops.

This collaborative urban design offers a sustainable neighbourhood model, integrating avenues, lanes, and pedestrian green streets with a corresponding grain of residential typologies by Alison Brooks Architects and Pollard Thomas Edwards. The terraced houses, courtyard houses, and villas are all Sustainable Homes Code Level 5, with home offices. A trio of ‘palazzo’ apartment buildings signal a permeable neighbourhood threshold."

The jury says: "The ingenious spatial notching of many dwellings at Knights Park permits an admirable variety of roof shapes. It also reintroduces the long-forbidden principle of flying freehold, whereby the upper floor of one of the apartment types sits above the garage space for a house belonging to the terrace beyond.

Internal ceiling heights are higher than is typical in most UK dwellings. The undefined programmatic use for many of the rooms – which means that occupants can opt to use a given space as a bedroom, living room or office – results in a greater degree of flexibility and adaptability for the future."

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal

Contractor Hill

Structural engineer Price and Myers

Services engineer DW Pointer and Partners

Gross internal area 40,306m²