Robinson College, Cambridge, Newnham, Cambridgeshire

Summary

A college of the University of Cambridge, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and constructed between 1977 and 1980.

Description

A college of the University of Cambridge, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and constructed between 1977 and 1980.

MATERIALS

The structural frame of the college is built of reinforced concrete. The walls are faced in a variety of handmade red bricks produced by the Swanage brickworks and laid in stretcher bond. The walls are punctured by square windows in varied grid-like configurations. Roofs are covered in pantiles and some upper walls are hung with plain tiles. Almost all exposed internal timber is quarter-sawn Douglas fir from British Columbia, except some oak panelling and flooring in the dining hall.

PLAN

The college has a basement podium, a raised ground floor around which most of the communal facilities are grouped, one principal upper level and further upper storeys of accommodation. The buildings follow the perimeter of the site boundary along Grange Road and Herschel Road, and have inhabited inner and outer walls of accommodation either side of a linked series of courtyards at their centre. The majority of the residential accommodation faces the inner garden-side of the site.

EXTERIOR:

The college buildings follow the eastern half of Herschel Road and continue to form an L-shaped block along the length of Grange Road where they terminate at Adams Road. The whole site stands on a basement podium which creates a raised ground floor deck principally accessed through the ramped entrance at the porters’ lodge. On the outer and inner sides of this deck there are inhabited walls of accommodation. At the centre is a series of linked courtyards paved in brick.

Outer block:

The Herschel Road elevation comprises several residential flats over three storeys with a set-back, tile-hung upper storey. At ground floor there is a broad flat archway leading into the basement car park. The fenestration follows the varied grids of square windows seen all over the college. The upper storey is broken into smaller blocks with individual features such as a glazed porch and a winter garden adding to the sense of variety.

The south elevation of the library is signified by the presence of three triangular bay windows running from the basement to the first floor, each glazed within a lattice of square glazing bars.

The library’s south-east elevation is a point of major architectural emphasis. From basement to first floor a stepped pyramid of glazing rises, projecting slightly from the surface of the wall. Above it, suggesting crenulation, there are three glazed embrasures at second floor level, and, in the hipped, pantiled, roof, there is an inverted dormer forming a small roof terrace.

A ramped entrance connects the street to the raised deck of the ground floor, through a square archway that incorporates the library’s north-east window. The archway has a portcullis-like lattice below it, and a balcony above, all connected to the five-storey tower over the porters’ lodge. The whole impression is of a defensive gatehouse in the tradition of Queens’ College.

The first block along Grange Road is ten bays long and three storeys high. It features a number of wooden lattices fixed to the exterior, varying in height and shape. There are several basement entrances, and large expanses of blank walling. The principal feature is the projecting clerestorey walkway of the chapel, which takes its form from the ‘hen run’ of the Glasgow School of Art.

An open space bridges the gap to the second block along Grange Road. This second block is three storeys high with an open basement wall screened by lattices. At the raised ground floor there is a continuous oriel window seven bays wide, above which is a jettied run of first floor rooms. Both of these upper levels are college offices. This block has a tower-like termination where it rises to the level of High Court.

Where this corner tower joins the Grange Road elevation of High Court there is an especially complex junction, formed from multiple planes of receding and projecting elements. The Bin Brook runs below the basement. It is crossed by a tangle of bridges at basement and ground floor levels (the ground floor bridge has been glazed since its construction). A stepped ramp connects the ground floor to the street. The building projects outward at first floor, and a small square balcony steps forward again to meet the corner tower. Over the bridge at the second storey the accommodation is recessed to form a balcony.

Beyond the brook on the Grange Road side the building continues as a three storey structure above the basement. A long series of windows at the raised ground floor signifies the workshops of the maintenance department. The north-east corner has recessed balconies at the second floor. The north elevation marks the termination of the outer block where it meets Adams Road. It has a large double-height vehicle entrance into the loading bay at basement level, screened by metal gates in the same lattice motif that recurs around the college.

Garden side:

From Adams Road to Herschel Road the inner side of the college stands roughly parallel to the outer side. At the Adams Road corner the blank walls of the service yard have some new doorways inserted at the lower level before the line of the building is opened up to provide a viewing point from the raised deck at High Court. The viewing parapet is between two towers, the tallest on the south side incorporates a large chimney flue.

Between the tower and the Bin Brook there is a short section of accommodation that establishes the pattern of student housing seen throughout the garden-side blocks. The basement and ground floors are given over to service and communal facilities. The upper four floors all provide student bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms. At first floor there is a continual walkway that connects all the way to the end of the Herschel Road block, marked every other bay by storey-height windows beneath the short colonnades of turned bricks that support the balconies of the rooms above. The blank and inhabited bays alternate at the third floor where the balconies are recessed with blank walls behind them. The fourth is covered in hung plain tiles and has triangular recesses in-line with the balconies below it, contributing to the crenulated silhouette.

Individual elements have particular differences. Where the buildings cross the Bin Brook there is a large rectangular opening within which a stepped ramp leads down to the garden level.

The Garden Restaurant has a fully glazed ground floor, eleven bays in width, with a recessed clerestorey (or photobolic screen). Above it is the bar and JCR, which has a two-bay recessed balcony. The terrace in front of the restaurant was remodelled in 2016.

The dining hall steps forward from the main elevation, creating a wider balcony above. Its garden elevation is largely screened by foliage but includes eight large clerestorey windows lighting down into the lower level of the hall below.

Between the dining hall and the auditorium at basement level is the garden room and seminar room, and at ground floor level is the SCR, all fully glazed.

The auditorium thrusts forward with canted sides and is totally unglazed. It maintains the rhythm of turned brick pilasters found throughout the rest of the garden front. Its roof is a wide brick-paved deck joined to the continuous first floor walkway. To the right hand side is a two-storey entrance that connects both to the auditorium and to the associated workshop.

The garden front of the Herschel Road block continues the same detail as the main buildings for its upper storeys, and extends the student staircase directly down to the garden. An unglazed passageway runs across the raised ground floor level creating a long, connected balcony. This block terminates in a hexagonal tower at its western end, connected to the differing levels of accommodation with a variety of junctions and balconies.

Front Court:

Front Court is trapezoid in plan and is accessed through the gatehouse-like porters’ lodge. Opposite the lodge the accommodation steps upwards over four and a half storeys, terminating in a pitched roof flanked with stair turrets. The first and second floors have continuous balcony walkways, while the individual bedrooms of the second floor project forward to create the balconies of the floor above. This is the standard pattern used for the inner side of Long Court. At ground floor there is storey-height glazing leading to lounge and foyer spaces for the auditorium. The other three sides of the court include the chapel, library, and residential flats.

The central feature of the chapel’s Front Court elevation is the large window that swells outwards and replaces the brick walling in large, asymmetrical steps. Piper’s stained glass is clearly discernible from the outside. To the left is the principal entrance: a large doorway furnished with artistic bronze work by Jacqueline Steiger. A complex brick surround of stepped forms coils around it. A similar brick detail is repeated at the smaller right-hand entrance.

The library connects to the tower over the porters’ lodge. A slightly reduced mirror image of the stepped-pyramid window on the street-side projects inwards into Front Court, and a single large window above it refers back to the crenulated street frontage. Another tower on the right hand side complete’s the library’s defences.

The residential flats are two storeys high at this point and share the same playful square fenestration as elsewhere in the college. Triangular steps project outwards from a shared recessed porch, creating a square threshold for two flats.

Long Court:

Long Court resembles a street more than a courtyard. It has one larger open space between the Linnet Room and the administration offices where there is a break in the buildings along the outer block. Both the inner and outer sides of the court have upper walkways. The inner block follows the same template as the upper storeys of the Front Court, while its ground floor provides entrances to communal areas. The administration offices have an upper half-storey hung with plain tiles.

High Court:

Accessed via a flight of steps from the ‘ground’ level of Long Court, High Court creates another raised deck at first floor level. It continues the same pattern of student accommodation on the garden side, terminating in a tall hexagonal chimney/tower and a break in the building line to allow views into the garden over a parapet wall. Across the break there is a polygonal building with its own smaller tower forming the music suite. It connects to the outer block of the college where several sets (shared study bedrooms) are housed with shared second floor balconies and tall expanses of tile-hung walls.

Herschel Court:

Herschel Court is divided from Front Court by a gateway-bridge with finely detailed stepped brick jambs. A second bridge crosses the Court at the end of the Outer Block. The outer accommodation contains residential flats rising two storeys above the deck. Some are accessed via the upper level, and others directly from Herschel Court through shared porches contained within T-shaped openings in the walling. The garden-side block is taller and longer. It has a continuous walk-way at first floor level, and a succession of balconies stepping back towards the third floor.

INTERIOR:

The chapel:

The inter-denominational chapel has a long polygonal form that swells outwards towards Front Court at its centre. The narrow north and south ends both have galleries made from stepped slabs of French Massangis Jaune stone. At the north end, beneath the specially made Frobenius pipe organ (one of the earliest in England), is the antechapel and a smaller side chapel. The side chapel contains a square window with glass by Patrick Reyntiens (‘Epiphany’) and a stone screen against one wall, opposite which is a granite altar or holy table supported by three brick steps, and set against three receding angles of brickwork. Separating the antechapel from the chapel proper is a bronze gate with naturalistic leaves that climb up to the organ loft, produced by Jacqueline Steiger.

The space at the centre of the chapel proper has a complex form: the west wall opens through a large square archway, which steps down onto a round brick column at the left hand side. Beyond this is a huge asymmetrical stained glass wall showing ‘the Light of the World’ by John Piper. Opposite is a clerestorey that runs behind wide brick columns, connecting the two galleries. The floor of the worship space has a grid of patterned brickwork and stone. The pitched ceiling is lined with stained pine boards and is of varied planes. There are memorials to Professor Lord Lewis, the first Warden of the college; Peggy Umney, David Robinson’s life-long assistant (‘without her help this college would not have been built’); and to Robinson himself.

The Library:

The library is arranged over three floors and comprises a large area of bookstacks with desks and carrels, administrative areas, and some smaller ancillary spaces. The bookstacks are on all three levels and stand between large windows facing out towards Grange Road on one side, and into Front Court on the other. The upper two storeys are set back from these windows so that the library is lit with uninterrupted glazing. Each vertical column of the grid of glazing is marked by a fin of panelling to reduce the glare of sunlight. The fins, staircase, bookstacks, balustrades, some gated carrels and the fronts of the tiered balconies are panelled with perpendicular joinery that continues the lattice grid motif, contributing to the space’s strong stylistic affinity to CR Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art.

Communal spaces:

The Dining Hall connects to the SCR and JCR via the north and south stairs respectively. It comprises a large open hall with clerestorey windows on the west (garden) side and a broad balcony on the east (Long Court) side. The clerestorey windows are interspaced by deep, narrow columns of brick with triangular ends. Beneath the windows are oak panels, a rare departure from the use of pine. The balcony front is built of finely detailed angled brickwork.

The Auditorium has a capacity of around 270. Seating is raked so that the auditorium is entered from the ground floor while the stage is at the level of the basement. The walls are formed of stepped planes of brickwork. Back of house spaces include dressing rooms and a workshop. Both the stage and workshop have double-height getting-in doors.

The Umney Theatre was created in 1990 and named after Peggy Umney. It functions as a smaller alternative to the large college auditorium. It has a complex suspended ceiling and hessian panels around its walls as an aid to the space’s acoustic performance.

Garden Restaurant, JCR (‘Junior Combination Room’, an undergraduate common room), Bar (called ‘the Red Brick’), TV Room, Games Room and Robinson College Students Association (‘RCSA’) are all communal spaces that share the presiding characteristics of the college in their commitment to finely detailed brickwork combined with pine joinery.

The bop room in the basement has less refined surfaces but has retained its original layout, bar and sunken dance floor.

An original dark room for student use can still be found on K staircase.

The MCR (‘Middle Combination Room’, a postgraduate common room) has a large amount of pine joinery, including shelving, panelling, and a vaulted ceiling of pine boards.

The SCR (‘Senior Combination Room’, the fellows’ common rooms) occupies a suite of facilities including lounges and dining rooms over two storeys between the auditorium and the dining hall.

The music suite accessed from High Court includes a high-ceilinged music room that has a polygonal plan, partly-panelled walls, and a small upper gallery. Additionally, there are music practice rooms, a soundproof ‘hi-fi room’ (now also a practice room), and a record library.

The porters’ lodge is characterised by a high degree of pine joinery that employs the regularly repeated college grid motif. It is a two storey space with the porters’ mess on a mezzanine above the front desk, and also houses back office space and storage rooms.

Teaching rooms:

Typically single celled rooms with polygonal plan forms and dado rails.

Offices:

The college offices have a flexible plan form that has been altered since their creation and underwent complete internal reconstruction in 2022.

Residential Areas:

Student accommodation varies in standard so that some have shared bathrooms and some have en-suite facilities. Most accommodation is found along the inner garden side of the college, running from staircases A to S with shared kitchen facilities. Where rooms have been refurbished they still retain some original fixtures such as picture rails and fitted wardrobes. Where original bathroom and kitchen fittings survive they are standard features of their period rather than bespoke. Flats and sets have more complex plan forms.

Service Areas:

Most service areas are located in the basement and in some small areas of sub-basement. Though a limited degree of reconfiguration has taken place, they are substantially unaltered. They have a utilitarian character in keeping with their function, with hard wearing surfaces of brick or tile and (in the workshop) limited areas of pine flooring. The ‘cloisters’ run the length of Long Court at basement level as an unglazed corridor screened with wooden lattices.

History

Early in 1974 the University of Cambridge announced that funding for a new college had been given by David Robinson (1904-1987). Born in the city and educated at Cambridge High School for Boys, he made a fortune renting televisions and radios under the name Robinson Rentals, and from his major contribution to British horse racing. His wealth funded many philanthropic schemes, including the unprecedented donation of £18,000,000 to fund the creation of Robinson College.

A site was found on Grange Road, next to Ralph Erskine’s Grade II* listed buildings at Clare Hall (1969). The five-hectare area between Adams and Herschel Roads was occupied by Edwardian villas all of which had extensive gardens planted with mature trees. The Bin Brook, a chalk stream that is a tributary of the River Cam, flowed through the site and was historically prone to flood.

It would be Cambridge’s first purpose-built co-educational college that provided for undergraduates and post-graduates and was intended to accommodate 600 students.

Ten practices were invited to compete in a limited competition for the design of the college, from which four went on to a second stage: Feilden & Mawson; Eric Lyons, Cadbury-Brown, Metcalfe & Cunningham; MacCormac & Jamieson, and the eventual winners Gillespie, Kidd & Coia (GK&C). Models of all four second-stage schemes are held in the college library.

The partners in charge at GK&C were Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein. From 1978 they worked with Cambridge architects Whitworth & Hall, and Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardell (YRM). The consulting structural engineers were Ove Arup & Partners (Scotland) and the mechanical engineers were Oscar Faber & Partners. The final design also represents contributions from the various committees and representatives that acted on behalf of the college itself.

GK&C were the only practice whose scheme proposed to preserve most of the Edwardian gardens. The new college buildings were all to be concentrated in megastructures that followed the boundary of the site so as to incorporate the existing gardens. The original scheme for 600 students extended these perimeter blocks along Adams Road; this northern arm was never constructed due to the varied ownership of the rest of the properties and as completed the college only accommodated 350.

Construction of the college began in 1977 and the buildings began to be occupied in July 1980. It was formally opened by HM The Queen in early 1981. The college was recognised by the RIBA with their Eastern Award in 1983.

The original ranges of the college have changed little since the time of its completion. The principal entrance is through the ramped gatehouse that houses the porters’ lodge. A succession of courts (Front Court, Long Court, High Court and Herschel Court) lie between inhabited walls of raked accommodation and connect to the principal communal spaces: the hall, library, chapel, auditoria, common rooms etc. Domestic accommodation is all arranged around staircases in the traditional collegiate fashion, but connected upper balconies and bridges provide for horizontal communication. Some services which still survive would have been unusual as purpose built facilities in a Cambridge college: a music suite with dedicated record library and hi-fi room, and a photographers’ dark room. A high proportion of bedrooms have private bathrooms of their own: a response to the college’s early recognition of a potential conferencing market.

The major artistic interiors of the college are the only ones where GK&C were able to extend their designs to the furnishings as well as the architecture. These are the chapel (featuring artistic contributions from John Piper, Patrick Reyntiens, and Jacqueline Steiger, and an organ by Frobenius), and the library (where the firm’s affinities with the Glasgow School of Art are most clearly displayed).

Perhaps the most substantial alteration to the college since its construction was the creation of the Umney Theatre in around 1990. This smaller theatre provides an alternative to the college’s large theatre and has been inserted into the double-height octagonal service yard that originally occupied part of the area beneath High Court.

Other changes include the relocation of the nurse’s suite of rooms, originally devised as a spacious surgery with two connected bedrooms for students in the nurse’s care. This is now the IT suite and the nurse no longer has bedrooms of this kind.

As originally conceived the staircases were all open to the elements, creating draughts and reducing the thermal efficiency of the bedrooms. These are now enclosed with glazed doors, as is the ground floor bridge over the Bin Brook which was originally an open-sided deck.

In 2016 an additional bridge was created over the Bin Brook to better connect the area beneath High Court with the gardens.

Some areas of technical difficulty have become apparent since the building’s completion. These include the provision of fully inclusive access arrangements throughout the college (this was originally provided only for certain areas), and a recurring fault in the draining detail of wall cavities that has resulted in maintenance problems associated with water ingress.

GK&C was a Glasgow-based architectural practice founded by James Salmon in 1830 and inherited by John Gaff Gillespie in 1903. Giacomo Antonio ‘Jack’ Coia was made a partner in 1927 and inherited the practice following the deaths of Gillespie and William Alexander Kidd in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Coia, born in Wolverhampton of Italian extraction, secured work from the Diocese of Glasgow and continued the connection after the Second World War, but from 1954 delegated most of the design work to two young assistants, Isi Metzstein (1928-2012), a German Jewish refugee, and Andrew MacMillan (1928-2014) a highland Presbyterian. They combined this design work with teaching; MacMillan served as head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture from 1973 to 1994. Most of their work in Scotland is listed. They pioneered Liturgical planning in Roman Catholic churches, beginning in 1957 at St Paul, Glenrothes. The best of their Scottish churches are listed at category A, including their seminary, St Peter’s, Cardross. Although they remain best known for their religious buildings, Leslie Martin encouraged the firm to diversify into university buildings when he secured them a large commission for residential blocks at The Lawns, Hull University, begun in 1963 and listed Grade II*. Their small complex for Blackwell’s Music Shop and Wadham College at Oxford is listed Grade II. In the 1970s, as church commissions declined, university work and teaching work came to dominate the practice. Robinson College is GK&C’s largest ever project, and is the only one where Metzstein and MacMillan’s connections to the Glasgow School of Art are so extensively manifested.

Reasons for Listing

Robinson College, in the University of Cambridge, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and constructed between 1977 and 1980, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* For the successful balancing of traditional typological and contextual architectural forms within a modernist megastructure;

* As the largest work ever undertaken by Metzstein and MacMillan for Gillespie, Kidd & Coia;

* For the complexity and variety of the building's highly detailed exteriors and external planning;

* For the exceptional architectural quality of the chapel, featuring the work of Piper, Reyntiens, Steiger and Frobenius;

* For the more than special interest of the library, which has very fine joinery detail and architectural affiliations to the Glasgow School of Art.

Historic interest:

* As a progression of nearly eight centuries of college construction within the University of Cambridge;

* For its place in the highly significant body of post-Second World War university architecture in England.

Group value:

* For the building's proximity to, and functional affinity with Clare Hall (Grade II*), which stands on the opposite site of Herschel Road.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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