Two Cambridge Colleges: Newnham and Robinson

 

Newnham College Hall

A visit to two Cambridge colleges on the same day can be very revealing. One college, Robinson, was by architects trying to create a major statement; the other, Newnham, looked to me a space where people would be happy to live and study together. Put simply, one college looked happy, the other forlorn, as if the humans survived in it, rather than benefitting from the environment. 

Newnham College

The look and feel of Newnham was established by Basil Champneys (responsible for the buildings from 1875 to 1910), whose goal seemed to be to create a human-scale collection of buildings, each self-contained but linked by passageways, creating a partially enclosed area with a garden laid out in fairly regular beds. This is not an attempt at a major statement, and is all the more creditable for that. 

Recent additions to the original complex have if anything enhanced the space, completing an informal quadrangle with a cafe on one side. I enjoyed a cup of coffee looking at this view of the original gatehouse, now no longer the main entrance. This is human-scale architecture, with clever designs in the brickwork; not ostentatious, but thoughtful. I could imagine becoming very fond of this mixture of buildings and gardens. 

It was very instructive to cross the road and walk through the nearby Sidgwick site, with several of the main University buildings, including the History Faculty, the Library, and the Faculty of Law. Here were buildings without reference to each other, with a dreary paved environment all around. It was a confusing and messy group, that revealed all the more the sensitivity and tranquillity of the Newnham campus. 

Robinson College

Robinson, like Newnham, is made of red brick; but there the similarity ends. It is one big L-shaped development (no separate buildings), built 1977-80, designed by the firm of Gilliespie, Kidd and Coia – highly regarded modernists. Sadly, the result feels neither collegiate nor unified. The site was rectangular, and presumably the idea was to create buildings that resembled a castle entrance, with very high walls on two sides facing Grange Road. The entrance is certainly impressive: a powerful diagonal overlapping of blocks above a tall entrance,  with a lovely walkway up to the main gate. Inside, the intention was clearly to create a Corbusian walkway in the sky connecting all the main components. But the result is brick passageways, just more brick. As with many Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the gardeners do what they can, but they have little chance at Robinson. For much of the walkway, the gardeners have abandoned any attempt at introducing greenery. In my photo of the main walkway, there was a tiny signboard indicating a café – but the café was a sad, dark affair, and I didn’t go in.  A couple of people were smoking on the walkway. Pevsner optimistically describes the walkway as “bringing constant animation in term-time”. I would imagine the animation is from the users hurrying to be somewhere else: it’s not a space where anyone would willingly linger. 

Sadly, the garden side of the college isn’t much better. The monolithic structure of the college does not integrate with the garden. Climbing plants were introduced on the wall of the main hall, with disastrous results to the brickwork. When I visited, the plants, which were clearly damaging the structure, had just been removed, and the resulting brick looks dreadful. This is not a garden that you feel belongs to the college. 

There didn’t seem to be a very clear way through the college to the garden. I got lost and then found myself walking over a very noisy stream running underneath the college buildings. If there was a clearer route, I didn’t find it.

 Conclusion

Colleges are special places in which the users have little or no choice over the environment they inhabit. My conclusion from looking at these two colleges is that architects have a responsibility to create a congenial, as well as collegiate, space, that will be home for some years, for the students. One college achieves this magnificently; the other strikes me as an architectural statement that fails to create an integrated building and garden, a space that you would use, because you had to, but never celebrate. I would have sleepless nights at Robinson dreaming of the drawbridge being raised and having to walk all night along those brick walkways.