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Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —
Certified B Corporation — Adaptive Retrofit — Humanising Infrastructure — Making better places — Architecture — Public Realm — Spatial Strategy — Creative Reuse — Urban Transformation — Decarbonisation —

Cambridge Civic Quarter— Cambridge

Cambridge is a fast-growing productive city, increasingly making a globally-significant impact through the reputation of the University and research-led innovation in pharma and technology. Economic growth brings prosperity, but this is not evenly distributed: the city is one of the most unequal in the UK. Recent work in Kings Hedges has revealed that some children never come into the centre of the city, feeling that it has no place for them. As rents rise for commercial space, and with an increasing reliance by landlords on covenant strength, independent business space has been squeezed out and key civic spaces, such as station square, are dominated by chains.

The city’s cultural spaces have had a difficult time over the last decade and – like most cultural venues – rely on subsidy, which is increasingly uncertain. As property prices rise, Cambridge particularly lacks space for professional cultural production – for upskilling, mentoring, rehearsing and recording – which traditionally has provided a foothold for young people wanting to participate in the arts.

Our approach would embody the Council’s ‘One Cambridge’ model, enabling the Market, Guildhall and Corn Exchange to work as an ensemble, to be ‘greater than the sum of the parts’: a welcoming renewed civic estate in the heart of the city. Taking a cue from earlier periods, this could create over time a ‘great connector’ between formal and informal council services, market exchange, food, performance and creative production.

The city council has declared a climate emergency and set a target of net-zero by 2030. The centre of the city is wholly within a conservation area and many buildings are listed – this project could establish an exemplary approach to upgrading heritage to address climate emergency and reduce operational and embedded carbon. We believe that the project – at the heart of Cambridge – needs to mark a radical turning point in the city narrative: a catalyst that counter the story of ever-increasing socio-economic segregation into participative community wealth-building.

Revealed in this image is a new clear surface for the marketplace, incorporating the existing cobbles within a matrix that downplays the highway. This results in a space the size of Covent Garden Piazza –either for more market, or for events. A new access to the Guildhall basement is visible, allowing food demonstrations, kitchen takeovers and other events to be supported – part of a wider strategy to open the Guildhall up at ground level to create more access in a carefully controlled way. The marketplace will have more continuity with Peas Hill and Guildhall Street too, offering variation in the way public realm supports events and different configurations over 24 hours, at weekends or through the seasons.

The Market

As a rare example of a seven-day a week market, the market is a remarkable asset for the city, bringing the produce of the surrounding Fens into the city and providing high quality, low price food for residents, as well as a range of other goods. A generation of stall holders are beginning to retire, and the market needs renewal with a new generation of traders stepping up. Increasing hot food stalls need dedicated space and infrastructure. Physically, the market is tired and hard to clean, requiring investment. With a lack of central civic space, the city also needs place for practically deliverable occasional events.

There has been a lot of work on the potential for change in the market, and much of it is sound. Traders, often operating across many other markets, bring exceptional knowledge of what works and we would co-design with them to ensure they are fully integrated into the process of change, and see that it works for them. In support of the City’s achievement as a Gold Sustainable Food Place, we would like to explore finding space in the Guildhall for the market to host, train and develop around sustainable food.

The Guildhall - A City Hall for Cambridge!

Completed just after the war, and never finished as intended, the Guildhall reflects a particular period in local government and is increasingly a poor fit for running contemporary Cambridge. Its closed, austere nature and cellular interior do not match the spaces needed for modern government, and as such it is greatly underused resource – particularly since the Pandemic. Always the site of a civic building, the ‘Shire House’ was replaced by a ‘Town Hall’ in 1842, and by a ‘Guildhall’ at the end of the nineteenth century. We believe that this project would offer the chance to recast the building as a ‘City Hall’: representative of the city’s significance, and to open it up as a radically open, truly public building to support the democratic life of Cambridge, from supporting vulnerable citizens and planning future ‘good Growth’, to encouraging new knowledge, upskilling, culture and enterprise.

To achieve this, we have identified the potential to focus citizen services to the east side, against Guildhall Street, with a new public square that resolves level access on this side. Formal council functions, supported by dedicated ‘touchdown’ workspace would be located around the existing committee rooms and chamber, with open-plan, modernised workspace above.

The Basement – largely unused at present and not heritage-sensitive – is a real opportunity for rapid change. We would explore opening up a section for demonstration kitchens, storage for market traders and spaces for making, rehearsal and recording. A large cyclepark on the eastern side could help to reduce clutter in the public realm.

The West side of the building will become considerably more open, allowing access to three new levels of workspace and meeting rooms, offering facilities such as 3d printers, laser cutters, club space and practice rooms, culminating in the Cambridge Room and a great public terrace / roof garden with the best views of the city. This not only increases the activity within the building, but introduces new space that can be let to businesses - improving the financial sustainability of the Guildhall.

The First Floor: restored linking corridor allows formal Council functions to operate at the front of the building with a common welcoming reception and retained heritage spaces. By removing the lightwells and skylights over the courtroom & tourist office, a new series of public spaces are created, along access to the Large Hall and to new floors of shared workspace in the heart of the plan. Eventually this level could be physically linked to the Corn Exchange, allowing sequences of spaces to work together to support events, conferences, etc.

Built in the underused heart of the Guildhall, a series of new levels create a flowing public space, a place for start-up workers, important meetings, 3D printing and coding, repairing things, re-sewing your favourite jeans or attending homework club. The new space culminates in the Cambridge Room and a great public terrace / roofgarden with the best views of the city.

The Corn Exchange

While the Corn Exchange is at present the only venue in the city able to offer medium-scale performance space, it has always been a compromised space in terms of its ‘back of house’ and front of house facilities and its acoustics and thermal performance.

With little space for physical expansion and a limited capital budget we will look at the potential of tactical interventions that increase revenue and the utility of the building, making it a more pleasant and popular place to visit – for both audiences but also for visiting artists and performers.

We believe that there is a real opportunity to strip out accumulated stairs and subdivisions to create a fully accessible balcony level, better WCs and a generous bar space that can work from morning to night to increase the usability and financial stability of the building. We also believe that Parsons Court offers the opportunity to improve technical performance, house better servicing space and offer later high-level connections to the Guildhall, allowing the spaces to be used as a suite for conferences, etc, thereby improving their ability to be used throughout the day to generate further income.

A generous all-day first floor bar space. This space becomes a focus in the day time for creative thinking, allowing a different environment for touch down workspace or team working to the more corporate spaces found in Cambridge today. This indelible sense of creativity is imprinted in the space by showcasing the artistic talents of Cambridge residents. Through the early evening the space morphs to be a place for socialising even when performances are not happening, offering a unique locallysourced array of drinks and food.

Related

Cambridge Junction Redevelopment — Project Level Up

Options appraisal and tender for the works to deliver a cultural hub for Cambridge.

Greater Cambridge Greenways — Cambridgeshire

Establishing a high quality Greenway network of cycling routes from local villages into Cambridge

Future Business Centre — Cambridge

New build loose-fit co-working workspace for impact entrepreneurs and creative startups on the urban fringe of Cambridge

CONTACT

studio@5thstudio.co.uk

We are keen to receive CVs and short portfolios from Part 1 and Part 2 designers. Please contact us via recruitment@5thstudio.co.uk

We actively encourage qualified applicants from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

LONDON Unit 14 21 Wren Street London WC1X 0HF t +44 (0)20 7837 7221 View on Google Maps

CAMBRIDGE Darkroom Gwydir Street Cambridge CB1 2LJ t +44 (0)1223 516009 View on Google Maps