Kettle’s Yard
Subscribe now to instantly view this image
Subscribe to the Architects’ Journal (AJ) for instant access to the AJ Buildings Library, an online database of nearly 2,000 exemplar buildings in photographs, plans, elevations and details.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
Hufton + Crow Download Original
A remodelling of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge attempts to retain the gallery’s original domestic spirit.
A 1970 extension to a row of knocked-through cottages transformed Kettle’s Yard from what had been a home and house museum in a backwater of Cambridge into an important regional gallery. The place has been transformed again by Jamie Fobert and his team. The brief was challenging: to create generous spaces on a small footprint, which seamlessly continue from the house and are fit for the needs of a 21st-century gallery.
Jamie Fobert Architects was first commissioned in 2004 to create an education wing in the last part of the Castle Street frontage to become available. But a change of director and hiatus later, the entire building between the east side of Martin’s double-height volume and the retained wall of the Castle Street terrace has been hollowed out and remodelled. Rotten roofs have been rebuilt and brick floors cleaned. An entrance foyer has been created in patinated bronze and glass, leading into the remodelled trio of galleries, now the entrance desk and shop, which are paved in brick. Shopfitting details pick up on the simple white painted joinery found in the cottage. The former offices are now a café area with the rotten sweetshop bay replaced in patinated bronze.
Two airy new galleries have been slotted into the back of the terrace and its yard reached by a concrete-walled ramp or steps. The first of these galleries is lit from above with rooflights enlarged but with the same proportions as the originals; the second fronts the street with 4.4m-high bronze framed glass doors.
Beyond is the education wing, reached by another concrete staircase leading down from a balcony to an excavated basement. Views are now possible from the heart of the building across the sunken classroom through another bronze-framed window and the street. Further along, the restored façade is Gallery 3 – essentially a vitrine slotted in for viewing from the pavement.
From a circulation space between the galleries, a new black steel staircase with chunky welds folds up the rear of the terrace inside a black weatherclad form. This leads to a lecture theatre, archive space and offices on the upper floors, culminating in a landing and window seat with views of spires.
Data
- Begun: Sep 2015
- Completed: Oct 2017
- Floor area: 1,080m2
- Sector: Arts and culture
- Total cost: £11M
- Procurement: NEC3/Design and Build
- Address: Castle Street, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: Jamie Fobert Architects
- Project architect: Jamie Fobert
- Client: Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
- Structural engineer: Elliott Wood
- Architectural metalwork: Basset + Findlay
- Joinery: Coulson
- Concrete Floor: Lazenby
- Lighting consultant : Lightplan
- Project manager : 3PM
- Main Contractor : SDC
- CAD software used: Bentley Microstation