Summary
The dining hall, kitchens, and various communal spaces of Fitzwilliam College, designed by Denys Lasdun and built between 1960 and 1963.
Reasons for Designation
The Central Hall Building of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, comprising the dining hall, kitchens, and various communal spaces, designed by Denys Lasdun and built between 1960 and 1963, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a significant transitional work in the early practice of Denys Lasdun and Partners, a celebrated and highly influential practice;
* as an inventive post-war interpretation of a college dining hall, one with an exceptional spatial quality internally and with an external form that is unique within Lasdun’s works;
* for the inventive planning that led to the creation of the conspicuous SCR as an evocation of the college’s democratic principles.
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 its functional relationship with the Grade II listed Grove, New Court and Chapel at Fitzwilliam College.
History
In 1869 Cambridge University established a Non-Collegiate Students’ Board for students who could not afford traditional college membership. By 1950 this had become ‘Fitzwilliam House’ and was facing an existential crisis as Government grants provided fully funded university places to more students than ever before. Fitzwilliam responded by attaining formal collegiate status within the University, and obtaining funds from the University Grants Committee (UGC) for the construction of a purpose built college in the west of Cambridge.
The site was ‘The Grove’, a Regency villa built in 1814. By the 1950s it was owned by Winifred Armstrong who provided the land needed to begin the college. However, Mrs Armstrong retained a life interest in the house and around three acres of gardens at the centre of the college site. They would be fenced off from the college until her death in 1988.
Denys Lasdun secured the role of architect, submitting his first designs in 1958. Construction was underway between 1960 and 1967 on the first phases of the college. His designs had to account for the stringent UGC budget and the physical obstacle of the Grove and its gardens. Neighbouring colleges Murray Edwards (formerly New Hall) and Churchill had twice and three times the budget for student rooms respectively in comparison with Fitzwilliam.
Lasdun’s masterplan allowed for almost all of the traditional features of a Cambridge college to be delivered from the very first phase, whilst also allowing for the continual expansion of the campus as the rest of the site became available. All of the major communal functions were to be concentrated in a central hall building at the north end of the site; it contained the dining hall, combination rooms, bar, music room, library and lecture halls. Meanwhile, offices, teaching rooms, maintenance areas and all accommodation would be placed in long blocks that uncoiled around the perimeter of the college from a point south-west of the hall, creating an orthoganol spiral or ‘snail shell’ plan that could be added to over time.
Lasdun’s ‘snail shell’ plan would have created a series of unenclosed courts, subverting the traditional Cambridge succession of courtyards and allowing every building to have views of the hall. The plan oriented the college to its southern entrance and turned its back on the major street frontage along Huntingdon Road. The principal point of arrival would be through an axial pathway and a two-storey arch into an ‘Entrance Court’ at the centre of the spiral.
The plan was not fully realised. In 1969 Lasdun himself proposed a U-shaped court between the first phases and Storey’s Way. The scheme was impossible at that date in light of the continued presence of the Grove. By 1981 the college could no longer wait for the new land around the Grove and planned to expand its accommodation by building an additional storey on top of Lasdun’s residential blocks. Lasdun thought this would destroy the architectural character of the college. In 1982 he finally ended his involvement with Fitzwilliam, never having the opportunity to reconcile his first phases with the full extent of the site.
The need for new accommodation was addressed in 1984 by MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP). The firm delivered rooms for 100 students and fellows in a perimeter block at the south-west of the college called New Court 1984-1986. The same firm returned to the college in 1990-1991 for the creation of a chapel at the east end of Lasdun’s P-Staircase. The final C20 addition to the college was the creation of Wilson Court at the south-east corner of the site by van Heyningen and Hayward in 1994.
Denys Lasdun (1914-2001) was one of the most distinctive and creative of post-war architects. He is one of very few who began practicing before the Second World War and continued into the 1990s. He worked for Wells Coates before the war, and after a distinguished military service he joined Lubetkin and Tecton, and Fry and Drew. He established his own practice in 1960 when his own style emerged. This was a synthesis of 1930's modernism with a strong horizontality derived from Frank Lloyd Wright (whose planning he came to admire in the 1950s) and an interest in expressing services that makes for comparison with Louis Kahn. Perhaps of all British architects, Lasdun's work best demonstrates the cool, four-square and intellectually rigorous qualities of Kahn's work. A number of Lasdun's surviving buildings in England are now listed, many at high grades, such as the Royal College of Physicians at Grade I, and the nearby London University Institute of Education, the UEA Ziggurats (Norwich, Norfolk), Keeling House (Bethnal Green, London) and the National Theatre all at Grade II*. His other work in Cambridge (New Court at Christ's College) was also doomed to remain incomplete, as was his unrealised vision for three tall towers on the University's 'New Museums Site'. His own view of Fitzwilliam College was that it was 'NOT one of my favourites (was trying to find my bearings at the time)'. Lasdun was knighted in 1976.
The central hall building was completed as part of Lasdun’s first phase of construction, 1960-1963. It originally comprised a dining hall, various rooms for fellows including the ‘Senior Combination Room’ (SCR), the bar and ‘Junior Combination Room’ (JCR) for undergraduates, a dedicated space for research students, and kitchens at ground floor. At first floor level were a music room, lecture rooms, and the college library. The cube-like hall sat at the centre of the plan with these additional functions accommodated around it, a gravity-defying lantern poised on top with a frill of pre-cast concrete around its edge. Appended to the south-west corner was a rhomboid structure that originally served as the SCR; glazed, prominent and exposed, it expressed the college’s democratic ideals.
Various alterations have taken place since construction. Following the acquisition of the Grove, the SCR has moved to a more private setting in the Regency villa. The JCR has been expanded, smoothing out some changes in floor level originally introduced by Lasdun. A lift has been introduced to the southern entrance hall. The lantern underwent extensive repair and restoration in 2016, and new heating and cooling were introduced to the hall to address some of the challenging thermal conditions that result from its design.
In 2009 the Olisa Library was completed to the designs of Edward Cullinan, a pupil of Lasdun who had worked on the design of the college in the 1960s. The new library stands at the eastern boundary of the college and allowed the conversion of the former first-floor library in the central hall building into a flexible lecture room, conference facility and exam hall. Cullinan also delivered a programme of refurbishment to the hall, carried out in 2011. In 2013 at the north-west corner of the hall a two-storey extension was constructed to provide a set of stairs directly to these upper rooms.
Details
The dining hall, kitchens, and various communal spaces of Fitzwilliam College, designed by Denys Lasdun and built between 1960 and 1963.
MATERIALS: the building is constructed of blue-brown brick laid principally in Flemish bond, and in situ concrete. Some roofs and the first-floor west elevation are covered in copper. Other roofs are covered in asphalt.
PLAN: the dining hall stands at the centre of the plan, with kitchens to the north, and a ‘screens passage’ to the south. Historically, fellows inhabited the western parts of the ground floor, undergraduates the east, and research students occupied the areas between. The evacuation of the Senior and Middle Combination Rooms (SCR and MCR) to the Grove since 1988 has left a void in the old SCR and additional room for junior members in the research student room (MCR). The upper storey originally had a library, music room and lecture rooms; these are all now (2024) used flexibly.
EXTERIOR: the building stands centrally within the northern part of the college, attached to G staircase on its north side. The outer elements of the building are two storeys high and square in plan. It is walled in brick with a long horizontal band of glazing canted inwards at ground floor.
On the north side is the single-storey kitchen block, screened from Fellow’s Court (west) by the cloister, and from Tree Court (east) by later fences.
On the west side, a dramatic single-storey projection reaches out towards L staircase. Rhomboid in plan, with a thrusting copper-clad concrete roof, the old Senior Combination Room (SCR) has large panes of single glazing that originally served to expose the fellowship to the communal gaze of the college.
The first floor, east elevation, is clad in copper. Eight windows sit within canted copper hoods and identify the original location of the college library.
The south elevation has an off-centre entrance at ground level. Above this entrance bay, at first floor, are four windows flush with the elevation. These windows are a later-C20 addition; Lasdun’s original design had a lower roof over the stair hall.
The western parts of the first floor all have extremely narrow slit windows.
Floating above the wide bulk of brickwork that forms the mass of the building, set back from the outer edges, is a third storey: the flamboyant lantern that hovers above the hall. On each side it has six arched panes of glass, which seem to bear the weight of the in-situ concrete roof and the pre-cast concrete frill of parabolic hoods around its edge. It marks the highest point in the college.
INTERIOR: the building can be entered from all four compass points, though it does not have a clear principal entrance. The hallways have wooden floors and panelling to dado height. At the centre of the plan is the dining hall. A cube-like space, brightly lit by the lantern. Seen from beneath, the roof is a grid of square concrete ribs set on the diagonal. In the triangular spaces around the perimeter are smaller triangular light fittings. The weight of this massive ceiling rests on slender arches and single panes of glass. Beneath the lantern there are structural bands of shuttered concrete separated by a wide, storey-height, expanse of textured render. This band is broken on the east side by a first floor gallery, sometimes used by the college choir. At ground level the walls are lined with matchboard panels and the floors covered in wooden boards. A raised dais stands at the west end. Kitchens are accessed through a panelled screen to the north, and the ‘screens passage’ on the south side is glazed.
While some of the original functions identifiable around the hall have changed, the layout of rooms is largely as it was when first completed. Joinery details survive: doors, original fenestration, architraves and dado panels. The old SCR has a matchboard panel ceiling. A café / bar has been created in the south-east corner, combining two earlier rooms and levelling the floors between them. The original bar has been removed from the eastern part of the plan. Original staircases survive but have had their oak handrails altered to accommodate an additional grip detail. The first-floor lecture room (the ‘Gaskoin Room’) includes an unusual set of in-built octagonal window seats against the slit-glazing on the eastern wall.
