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Student Services Centre, University of Cambridge

Cambridge

Project Details

£10m to £49.99M

Listed Building - Grade II

Practice

Bennetts Associates

31 Booth Street , MANCHESTER , M2 4AF

A new Student Services Centre and replacement examination halls for the University of Cambridge, the North Range of Buildings entails a combination of demolition, refurbished Grade II listed buildings and a new building. The project also implements the second phase of the New Museums Site masterplan that will greatly improve the public realm of this historically important site. Given the complex city centre location, eleven different user groups and an evolving masterplan, the project has required both extensive consultation and a flexible design approach that repairs and alters the existing fabric while also providing new accommodation. The new Student Services Centre relocates several student support functions from across Cambridge into a single, consolidated location, while the replacement Examination Halls also provide flexible seminar and multi-use space outside of the exams season, which complement the refurbished 250-seat historic lecture theatre. Following detailed dialogue with the university, city planners and Historic England, the original Examination Halls portal is to be re-used to form the new entrance, in order to preserve a memory of the significance of the site and its function in the evolution of the university. The implementation of the masterplan will improve the public realm through the demolition of several less significant buildings in order to create a more coherent and less overdeveloped series of urban courts, while also enabling better connections to and within the site.