North West Cambridge Lot 1
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WilkinsonEyre and Mole Architects’ Lot 1 surrounds a central cluster of services – including a supermarket and energy centre – with well-considered housing.
Lot 1 is located at the heart of the North West Cambridge scheme and is therefore key to the development of a successful community. The lot contains a variety of uses and the complex mix has been carefully co-ordinated to ensure their successful functional integration while creating positive architectural character and identity.
Along the western edge, WilkinsonEyre’s homely run of duplexes faces Mecanoo’s housing across Burkitt Lane, with its fenestration defined by sculpted white surrounds. The new block poses as more of a modern terrace as it steps down the street, playing with elements such as front yards with low walls, projecting window bays and deep entrances into each apartment. Following this street down, it passes the gate to the supermarket’s service yard and the front of the energy centre. They help to smooth the transition to the larger-scaled outer elevations of the block, designed by Mole Architects. The long-section housing apartments and the short-section health centre form an ‘L’, onto which the energy centre backs.
Across a courtyard this faces WilkinsonEyre’s U-shaped block, which caps off the lot, forming the corners with Turing Way. This moves back up to the east, past the edge of the Mole block and the entrance to the car park to form the elevation of the supermarket, marked by timber access doors covered with small canopies at ground level and clerestory windows above, as well as an entrance to the car park. Where this elevation meets the market square, the main entrance to this supermarket defines the northern edge, with a projecting steel and glass canopy.
The residential blocks have been arranged to wrap the service areas and large scale elevations of the food store and energy centre, providing varied residential block typologies and active street frontages. Mole Architects has worked with WilkinsonEyre on the L-shaped residential building wrapping the energy centre which also contains the heathcare facility. A courtyard garden was created to the south of the site with the massing generating accent points that respond to the key surrounding site access routes.
The whole development will be served by a central combined heat and power energy centre, with all residential units designed to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 standards and all non-residential areas built to BREEAM Excellent. This means the development has net zero carbon regulated loads and all units will also be Lifetime Homes-compliant.
Data
- Begun: Jan 2015
- Completed: Jan 2018
- Sectors: Education, Residential, Retail
- Procurement: NEC Option A
- Address: Turing Way, Cambridge, CB3 1AF, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: WilkinsonEyre and Mole Architects
- Project architect: Nat Keast
- Client: University of Cambridge
- Landscape architect: BBUK
- Structural engineer: URS/BAM Design
- M&E consultant: URS/Parsons Brinckerhoff
- Cost consultant/Quantity Surveyor: Gardiner & Theobald
- Building physics consultant: URS
- Fire consultant: International Fire Consultants
- Acoustic consultant: URS/Sol Acoustics
- Project manager: Turner & Townsend
- NEC supervisor: Calfordseaden
- CDM: Faithful + Gould
- Approved building inspector : Cambridge City Council Building Control
- Main contractor: BAM
- CAD software used: MicroStation, Rhino