Graduate Centre Cambridge

The river facing site presented the challenge of creating a multi-use building within a restricted area.

Open to all senior members of the college and their wives the building contains a range of common rooms split over two levels, a main dinning hall and private dinning rooms able to be subdivided in many ways. A ground floor bar, music room, billiards room, roof terrace and underground parking were also included.

The structure consists of a precast reinforced-concrete frame, post-tensioned with high-tensile bolts and locked together with in-situ concrete floors. The staircase towers are also in-situ concrete with the rear of the building containing the dinning-hall and kitchen having a perimeter column-and-beam structure infilled with limestone aggregate concrete blocks. Externally the common room bays are clad with large slabs of roach-bed Portland stone.