Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

Summary

The Cambridge Judge Business School, mainly of 1993-1995 by John Outram for the Judge Institute of Management Studies, incorporating the former Addenbrooke’s Hospital, built in the mid-C18, and extended and altered throughout the C19 and C20.

The Sainsbury Centre added in 2017 is excluded from the listing. The glazed link between the Cambridge Judge Business School and Keynes House (constructed in 2017) is also excluded from the listing.

Description

The Cambridge Judge Business School, mainly of 1993-5 by John Outram for the Judge Institute of Management Studies, incorporating the former Addenbrooke’s Hospital, built in the mid-C18, and extended and altered throughout the C19 and C20.

MATERIALS: the front (south-west) elevation, north and south wards, constructed in 1865 by Wyatt, are composed of yellow brick with stone, terracotta and ceramic tile details. The work by Outram (1993-1995) is of concrete clad in brick render, and solid brick construction (including reclaimed stocks), with brick, concrete and tile details, and timber windows. The cornices of the Gallery, Ark and Castle feature Outram's pre-cast coloured concrete elements known as ‘doodlecrete’ and ‘blitzcrete’. The roofs of the pediment, Gallery and Castle are of green pantiles. The Gallery interiors are of brick, some brightly coloured, with polished concrete finishes incorporating ‘blitzcrete’. The balustrades, walkways and stairs of the atrium are timber, and the floor of the atrium is finished with Carrara ‘C’ type marble tiles edged with black granite tiles.

PLAN: the former Addenbrooke's Hospital is a long symmetrical rectangular-plan building running on a north-west to south-east axis, having a central, four-storey block, and four-storey ward blocks to the north and south. A mezzanine floor was introduced between the ground and first floors of the north and south ward blocks in 2006. At the end of each ward block, a toilet and stair block projects to the rear. Outram retained the two four-storey wards, with the connecting screen wall between them, and added a large parallelogram-plan atrium (the Gallery) to the rear of the screen wall, providing a link to a rectangular-plan four-storey office block to the east (the Ark), and a square-plan five-storey lecture theatre block to the south-east (the Castle).

EXTERIOR: the former Addenbrooke's Hospital has a long imposing façade to a forecourt, facing west to Trumpington Street. The front elevation of the mid-C18 hospital was largely re-fronted by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt in 1865, with arcading being derived from North Italian late medieval sources. An attic storey was added between around 1915 and 1930, and the whole building was cleaned and attic storey rebuilt by John Outram between 1993 and 1995. The north and south wards are flat-roofed, and the roofs of Outram’s central pediment, Gallery and Castle are each of green pantiles on a shallow pitch. The central entrance bay has a rectangular projecting porch and a canted bay above rising through the first and second floors, that to the third floor not being canted. The porch has stone quoins and a door surround in the Jacobean style by Wyatt, surmounted by a stone cornice, which bears the name of the Judge Institute and date of 1990 inscribed on its frieze. The porch opening was infilled by Outram’s ‘Airlock Gothic’ double-leaf doors (replaced by a replica in 2017 to include a mechanism for universal disabled access) under a circular overlight. The canted bay of the first and second floors has stone quoins, and windows to the sides. To either side of the canted bay, there is an arcade of five round arches to the ground and first floors, with carved stone columns and red brick arches, the first floor arcade infilled with glazing by Outram. Outram lowered the ground level by 450mm, and introduced new stone plinths to the ground floor arcade. The second floor arcade is flat-arched with foliated columns standing on a balustrade wall, with diaper brickwork panels. The frieze of the second floor is inscribed with the name of the former Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The loggias of the third floor were rebuilt by Outram, with flat-arched arcading, blue concrete pilasters, red lattice-work balustrades and racer-green handrails to the terrace. The pilasters support a blue frieze with red dentils (most closely resembling logs, and so termed by Outram), and Outram also added the triangular pediment to the central bay.

At either end of the central block, six-bay ward blocks extend north-west and south-east, defined by seven brick buttresses with stone cappings and offsets at first floor level. The second floor of each wing has a continuous arcade of eighteen narrow bays with foliated stone columns on pedestals, carried on moulded corbels, and having decorative diaper brickwork to the plinth of each bay. The arcade is blind except for six windows set above the windows of the lower floors. The third floor has cast-concrete bands of grey over a jade green waved leaf band, broken by 11 bays of windows. Outram retained the existing fenestration arrangement throughout, albeit with cobalt-blue replacements. The rear (north-east), south-east and north-west elevations are also of yellow brick with blue window frames. The rear elevation of the ward blocks have stepped buttresses extending to the second floor, with round-arched window openings to the second floor, all others being flat-arched. The rear projections to the north-east and south-east corners of the north and south wards have narrow round-arched window openings to the lower three floors, and flat-arched openings to the top floor. Outram added a single-storey boiler room to the north-west elevation of the north ward.

The Gallery has tall glazed walls divided by giant engaged brick columns: the long north-east elevation has nine bays of glazing framed by ten columns, and the narrow north-west and south-east elevations each have two pairs of window bays divided by a column. These columns have yellow brick to their lower sections, red brick to the upper sections over the Ark and Castle, black glazed capitals, and two ‘blitzcrete’ dentil logs over each capital, incorporated into a green and blue ‘doodlecrete’ entablature. Those columns intersected by the Ark, have cast-concrete bases and red-brick plinths to the roof garden. The seventh and eight columns, which meet the centre of the Ark, have double columns. The side elevations each have two double-leaf aluminium-clad timber doors at ground floor level.

The Ark is seven bays in length, with yellow brick walls articulated by orange and grey diaper brickwork over a dark grey plinth. Each window bay is separated by minimal engaged pilasters, having white, black and yellow glazed diaper brickwork to the bases, bands of green 'blitzcrete', diaper brickwork to the shaft (continuous with the elevation), and splayed grey cast-concrete capitals (which double-up as planters for palm trees on the roof garden). Between each capital, there is a waved blue balustrade to the roof garden, with red cones and yellow timber latticework. Each window has tubular racer-green surrounds, cobalt blue framing, and a cast-concrete lintel, with lilac grey latticed panels separating the ground and first floor windows, and cast-concrete sills to the second and third floors. The Ark was formerly obscured from Tennis Court Road by the nurses’ hostels, and is now obscured by the Sainsbury Centre (excluded from this listing), which was constructed on the footprint of the former nurses’ hostels in 2017, and is linked to the Ark via a glazed link at ground floor and second floor levels.

The Castle is linked to the Gallery at its north-west corner, and takes the form of a five-storey block, square in plan, with a shallow green pantile roof, and orange brick walls over a grey battered plinth, which extends to the first floor. Each elevation has five short engaged pilasters, having pre-cast concrete dressings, black ventilation panels, and square black capitals, each with two ‘blitzcrete’ dentil logs on top and a ‘doodlecrete’ entablature. The recessed bays between have a variety of windows, all with cobalt-blue frames and many having herringbone brick panels beneath: the lecture theatres are illuminated by large round windows in creasing-tile surrounds, flanked by secondary pilasters with roll-moulded tops; the offices have square windows; and the top floor has pairs of segmental-arched windows. The ground floor stores have two door openings to the south-east and north-east elevations, and one to the north-west elevation, each with a cast-concrete lintel, all having Outram’s ‘Airlock Gothic’ doors, except one on the south-east elevation.

The glazed link between the Cambridge Judge Business School and Keynes House (constructed in 2017) is excluded from the listing.

INTERIOR: the floor plan of the C19 north and south hospital wards remains much the same, being reutilised as a library and offices, and IT room and seminar rooms respectively. A mezzanine was introduced between the ground and first floors of each of the ward blocks in 2006. The second and fourth floors of the north ward (formerly the first and second floors of the hospital) retain fireplaces with painted terracotta flues, and foliated bands and caps, that to the second floor having four flues, and that to the fourth floor having six flues. The interiors of the projecting stair halls at the north-east and south-east corners of the wards were remodelled by Outram.

Within the central section of the former Addenbrooke's Hospital building, Outram introduced an enclosed circular-plan stairwell and neighbouring lift shaft at each end, providing access to each of the six levels. The landings of the lifts have large round openings with creasing-tile surrounds overlooking the Gallery. Outram retained the giant cornice on the west wall of the ground floor, and introduced a café and seminar balconies to the second floor (formerly the first floor of the hospital), and more seminar balconies to the fourth and sixth floors (formerly the second and third floors of the hospital). Each of these seminar balconies overlooks the Gallery, a bright atrium (24.5m in height) constructed to the east of the former hospital between 1993 and 1995. The Gallery is described by Outram as being the social core, centre and theatre of the academic building, and is a vibrant and colour-filled space, enlivened by the use of coloured brick, concrete, ‘doodlecrete’ and blitzcrete’. Outram sees the Gallery as either a ‘Basilican Core’, as described by Alberti, or as a ‘Republic of the Valley’ with a river running from a rooftop source to the ocean, or Hobson’s Conduit on Trumpington Street (Architecture Today p 44). These themes were to have been explored in a ceiling mural, but the clients rejected this and instead there is a complex swirling two-dimensional pattern of plywood boards said to represent unopened irises, in alternating stained and unstained wood with blue spots. The atrium is framed by giant columns, their position determined by the proportions of Wyatt’s façade, and these ‘robot’ orders contain all the services of the building, accessed by concealed doors in the columns on every level. ‘Robot beams’ carry services horizontally across the Gallery, and combined with the working columns, form the ‘Sixth Order’. It was intended that the columns were to be digitally clad in a colourful skin, transforming the ‘Sixth Order’ into a ‘Talking Order’, and £100,000 was donated for this purpose, however this part of the scheme was cut and funding withdrawn. Outram calls the walkways over these ‘robot beams’ ‘goat paths’, reflecting the dramatic and precipitous terrain of goats across the valley. The columns have shiny black capitals, black being a symbol of knowledge. The ‘Solar Spiral’ design system allows the sun to enter the Gallery, the locus of the ‘Republic of the Valley’ in the morning, before the sun is shaded at mid-day, and shut out apart from reflected light in the afternoon. ‘Social Stairs’ span the Gallery, and were designed to theatricise the process of moving between floors, allowing clear views of occupants of the seminar boxes of the Gallery, and meeting rooms and roof garden of the Ark, and encouraging communication between users of the building. Along the east wall of the Gallery, cantilevered walkways provide direct access to those meeting rooms and offices of the Ark which overlook the Gallery.

The Ark is a rectangular-plan four-storey building, accessed from the Gallery via a central door aligned with the central entrance from Trumpington Street. A perpendicular corridor runs through the centre of the block on a north-west to south-east axis, providing access to small offices and meeting spaces to either side, and terminating in stairwells at each end. The ground floor and second floor of the Ark have been significantly altered to provide facilities and access to the Sainsbury Centre (2017, and excluded from this listing), however Outram’s plan form, partitions and doors survive relatively intact on the other floors.

The Castle is five storeys in height, and contains University stores on the ground floor (accessed from the exterior), administrative offices on the upper floors, and two raked lecture theatres on the first and second, and third and fourth floors respectively. Each lecture theatre retains its original plan form, seating and benches, with round brass portholes representing windows filled with skies and clouds. The Castle is accessed from the south-east corner of the Gallery at each level over the ground floor, providing universal disabled access to both the upper and lower levels of each lecture theatre. The north-west corner of the Castle slots in to the Gallery, with the walls to the interior of the Gallery receiving the same treatment as if they were external.

History

Post-Modernism, a movement and a style prevalent in architecture between about 1975 and 1990, is defined in terms of its relationship with modern architecture. Post-Modernist architecture is characterised by its plurality, engagement with urban context and setting, reference to older architectural traditions and use of metaphor and symbolism. As a formal language it has affinities with mannerism (unexpected exaggeration, distortions of classical scale and proportion) and the spatial sophistication of Baroque architecture. Post-Modernism accepts the technology of industrialised society but expresses it in more diverse ways than the machine imagery of the contemporary High-Tech style.

The origins of the style are found in the United States, notably in the work of Robert Venturi and Charles Moore which combined aspects of their country’s traditions (ranging from the C19 Shingle Style to Las Vegas) with the knowing irony of pop art. A parallel European stream combined an abstracted classicism or a revival of 1930s rationalism with renewed interest in the continental city and its building types. In England, the American and European idioms converged in the late 1970s, to produce works by architects of international significance, including James Stirling, and distinctive voices unique to Britain such as John Outram. The 1980s revival of the British economy was manifested in major urban projects by Terry Farrell and others in London, while practices such as CZWG devised striking imagery for commercial and residential developments in the Docklands and elsewhere.

Addenbrooke’s Hospital took its name from John Addenbrooke (1680-1719), a medical graduate of St Catherine’s College, who on his death, left a little over £4,500 in his will for the purpose of founding a small hospital for the poor of Cambridge. A site was purchased on the periphery of the city, on the east side of Trumpington Street in 1728, and neighbouring properties and parcels of land were acquired piecemeal over the following decades. Building work commenced around 1740 and was completed in 1766, providing 20 hospital beds. A drawing depicting the hospital in around 1810 shows a five-bay, two-storey building over a basement, with dormer windows and a central entrance, bounded to Trumpington Street by cast-iron railings, two square-plan gate piers, and wrought-iron gates with an overthrow. In 1817, the Committee decided to enlarge the Hospital, and a two-storey three-bay wing was added to each side of the main building in 1823-4 to the designs of Charles Humphrey (1772-1848), with a single-storey colonnade along the front of the building, linking the side wings. In 1825, a triangular pediment was added to the centre of the front elevation. The rear of the south wing was extended in 1833-34 by James Walton, and another two wards were added in 1844.

In the 1860s, the hospital committee purchased land to the north and south from Westfield’s Charity and Corpus Christi College, to provide: an outpatients’ department with waiting hall and dispensary; more cubic feet per beds in the wards; improved sanitation with the provision of a bathroom per ward or per pair of wards; enlarged kitchens; lifts; speaking tubes; and a new porters’ lodge. Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877) won the architectural competition, and the works which dramatically altered the appearance of the existing building, were completed in 1865. The 1820s wings and colonnade by Humphrey were demolished to make way for two large three-storey wings, and a three-storey arcade was applied to the front elevation to Trumpington Street, executed in stone, terracotta and encaustic tiles. The name ‘Addenbrooke’s Hospital’ was inscribed in the stone frieze over the second floor. Elsewhere, Wyatt collaborated with Brunel on Paddington Station (1852-4, listed at Grade I), and as Surveyor of the East India Company, collaborated with Sir George Gilbert Scott on the Foreign and India Offices (1863-1868, listed at Grade I), designing the colonnaded Durbar courtyard. Wyatt was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1866, was appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge in 1869, and served as Vice-President of the RIBA.

The 1888 Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows the enlarged plan form of the building. The hospital complex continued to expand throughout the late C19 and early C20 with the addition of a nurses’ hostel on Tennis Court Road (1884-1885 by Elbourn), a second nurses’ hostel on Tennis Court Road, Peckover House (1895 by W Fawcett), a clinical block north of the north ward (1895 by Mr Pick of Leicester), a new outpatients' block to the south of the front courtyard facing west to Trumpington Street (around 1920, now Browns restaurant), a new nurses’ hostel on the site of the earlier hostel (1923-1924 by T H Lyon), an extension to the outpatients’ building (1931), an extension to the nurses' hostels (1932), a detached block to the north side of the forecourt (1932, now known as Keynes House), and an office for the Maintenance Fund facing Trumpington Street (1933).

An attic storey was added to the main hospital building in three stages between around 1915 and 1930. The balconies to either side of the main entrance were infilled in 1931 to provide an almoner’s room, telephone room, porters’ dining room, and new staff room. Later in 1934, the colonnades to four of the wards were infilled with the addition of steel-framed windows which replaced Venetian blinds. The 1967 OS map shows significant expansion of the buildings: the northern wing was substantially deepened, and further additions had been made to the south end of the main hospital building and outpatients’ department. The landscaped forecourt was also lost in the mid-C20. From the 1940s, it became apparent that the Hospital required room to expand, and a site was acquired from the Pemberton Trustees at the south end of Hills Road in the early 1950s. The first buildings of the new Addenbrooke’s Hospital were completed in 1962, however it was not until 1984 that the last patient left the old hospital. The railings of the old hospital were listed in 1972 and the hospital building listed in 1986.

A generous benefaction from Sir Paul and Lady Anne Judge and the Honourable Simon Sainsbury allowed the conversion of the former hospital building to a new Institute of Management Studies in the 1990s. The building of a business school in Cambridge belatedly followed similar schools founded in Oxford and London in the 1960s – from relatively small beginnings these had expanded rapidly in the commercial culture of the 1980s. The Judges, Sainsbury and a distinguished building committee determined to commission an architecture that was ambitious and eye-catching, and to separate the school visually as well as in business terms from the refined welfare state modernism of the post-war university laid down by Sir Leslie Martin and his peers. A competition was accordingly held in 1990-1991 between seven invited architects, who represented a variety of styles, old and new, with an emphasis on conservation: Casson Conder, Green Lloyd Adams, Ian Ritchie, Nicholas Hare, John Outram and two Cambridge firms: R H Partnership and Bland, Brown and Cole. John Outram, suggested by Colin Amery, a member of the committee, was at the peak of his fame thanks to a series of office schemes, but had realised no new buildings since the Isle of Dogs Pumping Station (built 1986-1988, listed at Grade II*) and had turned to exhibition work. Outram was declared the winner of the Cambridge competition in 1991, design work commenced in the same year, planning permission was received in 1992, and the building contract commenced in 1993. Building works were carried out in association with Fitzroy Robinson Ltd; with Felix Samuely acting as structural engineers, and Max Fordham and Partners responsible for services. The project, with a vast area of 9,000 square metres was completed in 1995 at a cost of £11m. The business school moved into the building in September 1995, and the completed scheme was officially opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in March 1996.

John Outram was born in Taiping, Malaya, in 1934 and came to England in 1946. He was set for a military career but was dissuaded by national service, and instead discovered architecture. He studied at the Regent’s Street Polytechnic in 1955-1958 and at the Architectural Association in 1958-1960 where his tutors included Peter Smithson. He thus had an identical training to many brutalists and members of Archigram, the avant-garde architectural group of the early 1960s. He worked for the London County Council and Greater London Council, for Fitzroy Robinson and Louis de Soissons, before forming his own practice in 1973. He built his practice slowly with a series of warehouses in which his distinctive style slowly emerged, based on a practical building technique of traditional steel frames clad in pre-cast concrete, brick and with tiled roofs, but informed by a personal iconography based on years of acquiring antiquarian and philosophical books. The publication of his warehousing in Kensal Road, London, in 1983 brought him to wider attention. Elements of the Cambridge business school’s design can be identified in buildings such as Harp Heating in Swanley (1984-1985, demolished in 2016), the Aztec West business park near Bristol (1985-1988, altered), and the Isle of Dogs Pumping Station in particular (1987, listed at Grade II*). Outram’s mature style, as seen at the Isle of Dogs Pumping Station and the Cambridge business school, was later fully realised without impediment in his design of Duncan Hall for Rice University in Houston, Texas (1997).

At the Judge Institute of Management Studies (now the Cambridge Judge Business School), Outram retained Wyatt’s C19 arcaded façade to Trumpington Street, and rebuilt the early-C20 attic storey, gaining valuable space. The two three-storey ward blocks, with their high ceilings and good daylight, were converted to the library, seminar rooms and offices. The connecting screen wall between the ward blocks was retained, and two new buildings added at the rear (east) of the site, with twice as many floors (and half the floor height) as the ward blocks. The Ark, a rectangular-plan four-storey block, named with the drawings of Athanasius Kircher in mind, provides small offices where tutors, research graduates and administrative staff can discuss matters in pairs, and is surmounted by a roof garden. Outram proposed a planting and turf scheme for this roof garden, however this was cut due to lack of funding, and was later paved and planted with palm trees around 2010. The Castle accommodates the University stores within its battered plinth, and 160- and 80-seat auditoria for lectures and debates on the upper levels. These four elements (two old, two new) are linked behind the retained façade by the Gallery, a large glazed atrium, which Outram calls the ‘Republic of the Valley’ or the ‘Basilican Core’. The west wall of the Gallery accommodates a café and three levels of seminar balconies overlooking the atrium, accessed by walkways and ‘Social Stairs’, which cross the atrium to the Ark and its roof garden. Outram described the process of taking the back off the old link and replacing it by an atrium as ‘like a building which a surgeon from the old Addenbrooke’s Hospital has cut in half and sewn together’ (Perspectives on Architecture, August 1995, p.36). He explained that ‘having separate buildings enables one to be different, you don’t have to extend the architecture of the old building’ (Building, 2 April 1993, p 19).

Outram’s elevations are defined by giant orders, enlivened with his ‘blitzcrete’ (a polychrome ‘Dutch’ concrete made from five different types of crushed brick, rinsed and set in concrete), and his ‘doodlecrete’ (inlaid concrete formed using rubber moulds). The atrium is framed by giant columns, Outram's ‘robot’ orders or ‘Ordine Robotico’, which were first employed by Outram at Harp Heating in Swanley, Kent (demolished in 2016). These ‘robot’ orders both shield the atrium from the sun, and contain the services of the building, accessed by concealed doors in the columns on each level. ‘Robot beams’ carry services horizontally across the Gallery, the walkways over which Outram calls ‘goat paths’, reflecting the dramatic and precipitous terrain of goats across the valley. These ‘robot beams’ combined with the vertical ‘robot orders’, form Outram's ‘Sixth Order’. It was intended that the columns would be digitally clad in a colourful skin, and in combination with a colourful ceiling mural, and black and white marble floor, would transform the ‘Sixth Order’ into a ‘Talking Order’. Though £100,000 was donated for the ceiling mural, and the tiled floor was within cost, the elaborate designs were cut, leaving Outram’s near-contemporary faculty building in Texas as the only full realisation of his ‘Talking Order'. The Gallery is naturally ventilated by a plenum system, with air being drawn from the sides and out through clerestory windows that work on sensors to keep out rain. The lecture theatres also avoid air conditioning, having fresh air brought in by a plenum system under the seating. The heavyweight concrete and brick structure provides a relatively stable temperature in summer while in winter run-around coils transfer heat from the exhaust air to the fresh air.

The Judge Institute of Management Studies was rebranded as the Cambridge Judge Business School around 2006. In the same year, mezzanine floors were introduced between the ground and first floors of the former hospital wards. Planning and Listed Building Consent were granted in 2015 for a four-storey extension east of the business school, and associated alterations to the Grade II-listed building. Completed in October 2017, these works involved the demolition of the two former nurses’ hostels facing Tennis Court Road (not listed), and their replacement with a new building, the Simon Sainsbury Centre, which is linked to the former hospital building via Outram’s Ark and Gallery. Alterations to Outram’s building as part of this scheme include the replacement of the front doors in a similar style (to make them wheelchair accessible); new draught doors in the porch; addition of glazed links to the new Sainsbury Centre through the ground floor and second floor of the Ark, and associated alterations to the Ark; glazed links to the north-east walls of the Gallery and north ward; and a glazed second-floor link between the north ward and Keynes House.

Reasons for Listing

Architectural interest:

* as one of only seven surviving works in Britain by John Outram (1934- ), an important British architect of international renown, and one of his best-known buildings;
* for Outram’s highly creative re-working of a familiar formal language, executed with masterful handling of colour, pattern, scale and detail, and high-quality craftsmanship;
* as a highly successful example of Outram’s innovation and mature style, incorporating his 'robot orders', 'social stairs', and decorative ‘blitzcrete’ and ‘doodlecrete’;
* as a remarkable example of a new work complementing an existing listed building;
* as a distinctive and popular piece of Post-Modern architecture.

Historic interest:

* for the historic use of the building as the former Addenbrooke’s Hospital, built in the mid-C18, and altered by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt in 1865.

Group value:

* for the strong geographic and functional group value the Cambridge Judge Business School holds with nearby listed university buildings, including Downing College and the Fitzwilliam Museum (both listed at Grade I).

External Links

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