Education \ Cambridge Campus, Anglia Ruskin University

Young Street, Cambridge Campus. Completed in phases in 2014 and 2015.

Anglia Ruskin University purchased the 3.5 hectare site between Young Street and New Street in 2008. Located on the edge of the Petersfield Conservation area, it is within a few minutes’ walk from their main East Rd Campus.

The site consisted of a disused Victorian primary school (known as the Ragged School), and various derelict buildings and land from the former Cambridge College for Further Education. With the exception of the existing Brunswick Nursery School and a short terrace of private houses off Sturton Street, the University now had the opportunity not only of creating additional education floor space but also of repairing and reinstating a small piece of Cambridge’s historic urban fabric.

With the completion of separate building works on the East Rd Campus, there was little room for further major expansion. The Young Street site was thus to be developed in a phases to provide this. The first phase, completed in 2014, houses their Faculty of Nursing and Social Care, previously remotely located out with the city in Fulbourn. At the same time, the conservation and rehabilitation of the former Ragged School building was undertaken to provide a dedicated home for the University’s Music Therapy department. The last two phases include a new home for the Visual Eye Research Unit, administration and general teaching space, a new 200 seat lecture theatre as well as a dedicated café space for the new campus users.

Completed, the campus provides some 4500sqm of space. The ground floor of phase 1 features four “skills laboratories” being mock ups of hospital wards and an operating theatre; whilst on the first floor are six identical teaching spaces, all facing into a two storey atrium space. The 2nd and 3rd phases physically join to this to form a single connected complex of buildings that enclose new south facing external courtyard spaces containing both hard and soft landscaped areas. A series of external ‘pends’ provide pedestrian and cyclist access into the campus on all four sides.

The environmental performance of the 1st and 3rd phase buildings in particular is critical to understanding their design. The lower two floors of phase 1 are entirely naturally ventilated with air admitted via floor vents to the ground floor rooms and ceiling vents to the first floor rooms. External acoustic conditions obliged us to seal the fenestration on New Street and so extract is via externally expressed brick chimneys. These have been designed to form a major architectural feature to this elevation and, of course, there are obvious references to the famous elevation on Trinity Lane in the centre of the city. The north and south elevations deliberately contrast the former, being essentially a masonry wall punctured with windows, whereas the south is predominantly glazed and protected with louvres from overheating. The 2nd phase building containing the lecture theatre required mechanical ventilation. It has been given a unique façade of copper cladding and a dramatic stepped roof profile both to identify the lecture theatre volume within but also to signify the campus entrance at one end, whilst stepping down to the scale of the neighbouring, Victorian, conservation row housing at the other.

The projected was completed in September 2015.

Link to the Ragged School Music Therapy Centre project.

Architects Richard Murphy, James Mason, Stephen Leonard, James Cockburn, Kevin McAvinchey
Civil & Structural Engineer Clark Smith Partnership
M&E Engineer Van Zyl and de Villiers (Phase 1), RPA (Phases 2 & 3)
Project Manager Gardiner and Theobold LLP
Quantity Surveyor Gardiner and Theobold LLP
CDM Planning Supervisor Stace Health and Safety
Planning Consultant  Savills
Acoustics  Adrian James
BREEAM SCS
Landscape Craft Pegg
Client Anglia Ruskin University (Bishop Hall Properties)
Construction Cost £13m (Phase 1 -3)
Contractor Phase 1 Mulalley
Contractor Phase 2 & 3 RG Carter

Awards

2014 International Green Apple Silver Award for the Built Environment
2016 Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry (CFCI) Best New Large Building Award
2016 LABC Awards Best Educational Building
2017 Institute of Clerk of Works & Construction Inspectorate - Highly Commended

Press

July 2017 Cambridge Blue Copper Forum Magazine
February 2017 Dramatic Curved Facade Clad in Copper Dabs Magazine
October 2016 Anglia Ruskin University Young Street Campus Architecture Scotland Annual 2016
29 July 2016 Young Street Campus, Cambridge by Richard Murphy Architects Building Design
Spring/Summer 2016 Cambridge Design and Construction Awards: Best Large New Building Cambridge Architecture
28 September 2015 Murphy completes new Anglia Ruskin University campus Architects' Journal
28 September 2015 Young Street Campus for Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge e-architect
23 September 2015 Richard Murphy Architects handover Cambridge campus Urban Realm
21 September 2015 Michael Pinsky - I'm Laughing at Clouds, Cambridge UK Art & Architecture Journal
12 March 2013 21 Years, 21 Awards Construction Magazine
July 2011 University Plans Expansion Cambridge City News
29 June 2011 Plans For University Development Announced Cambridge News
Accessibility | Privacy Statement |
Subscribe to our Newsletter

© Richard Murphy Architects Ltd 1991-2024.

Registered in Scotland No 255372.

Site by Redstone Websites - Easy to Use Web Content Management.