The Simon Sainsbury Centre in Cambridge, Architecture Images, Building Expansion, Renewal Design

The Simon Sainsbury Centre in Cambridge, UK

Cambridge Judge Business School: University Building, England, design by Stanton Williams Architects

19 May 2019

A RIBA East Award Winner

RIBA East Awards 2019

30 Jun 2018
The Simon Sainsbury Centre Shortlisted at World Architecture Festival 2018 Awards

The Simon Sainsbury Centre in Cambridge is one of 536 shortlisted entries across 81 countries:

World Architecture Festival Awards 2018 Shortlist

12 Jan 2018

The Simon Sainsbury Centre

Architects: Stanton Williams

Location: Cambridge, England

The Simon Sainsbury Centre

Photos © Hufton+Crow

Stanton Williams extends Cambridge Judge Business School site to create a major centre for business education

Stirling Prize-winning architect Stanton Williams has completed a £21.5 million expansion for Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, demonstrating the practice’s expertise in unlocking the potential of complex sites, and creating a versatile hub for postgraduate and executive business education.

The Simon Sainsbury Centre is built adjoining the Business School’s Grade II listed, John Outram-redesigned Addenbrooke’s building. This wonderful new space brings together all parts of the Cambridge Judge Business School community: preexperience and post-experience students; EMBA participants; Executive Education clients; faculty; staff and external partners, enabling the Cambridge Judge Business School community to continue solving real-world problems with greater diversity and creativity.

The new four storey 5,000sqm building replaces two former nurses’ hostels on Tennis Court Road along the eastern boundary of the site. It has been designed to complement rather than compete with the Outram building, which was completed in 1995 as a remodelling of the 18th and 19th Century hospital buildings.

As well as providing flexible education spaces for the School’s Executive Education programme, the Centre contains additional teaching, conferencing, office breakout and dining spaces for the school, reflecting the evolving culture of the University and the changing requirements of learning environments. Through the physical juxtaposition of old, new and the more recent past, the project demonstrates a complex layering of history which embodies the identity of the School whilst expressing its contemporary needs.

Stanton Williams’s design is conceived as an extension to the original hospital, drawing inspiration from the historic masonry façade designed by Matthew Digby Wyatt. This rhythm of brick buttresses and fine stone columns sets the structural and material tone of the new building.

The height of the hospital wards within the existing building establishes principal floor levels and room heights across the site, while the massing reinstates the scale of the original hospital campus, helping to anchor the school in its urban setting.

Use of strong colour and refined materials, juxtaposed with exposed structural concrete, references the bold colour, rich materials and exposed structure of both the 19th Century building and the 1990s Outram transformation. The resulting campus creates a unified identity that transcends individual period styles.

Internal spaces have been designed to promote interaction between students, delegates and staff through the provision of generous foyer and circulation spaces. This engaging environment provides a sequence of spaces of different scales and characters, all with a strong sense of materiality and access to views.

The Centre is on track to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating for sustainability. It utilises an innovative strategy of distributed ventilation with the incorporation of 60 small heat recovery units within the building envelope to create a ‘breathing façade’. This use of the Trox system is the first of its type in the UK.

“The new building will bring together all parts of our community under one roof while maintaining our position at the heart of the Cambridge Cluster. In doing so, it will enable us to continue solving real-world problems in even more diverse and creative ways,” says Christoph Loch, Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School.

“The Simon Sainsbury Centre embodies the identity of the School whilst fulfilling its contemporary needs, adding a further layer to the progressive transformation of this historic site,” says Gavin Henderson, Director at Stanton Williams.

The Simon Sainsbury Centre in Cambridge – Building Information

Location: Cambridge
Client: University of Cambridge
Completion: end October 2017
Student occupation: January 2018
Construction cost: £21.5 million
Size: New Building – 5,506sqm GIA Cost per sqm (£/sqm of GIA): £3,898/sqm

Project Team
Client: The University of Cambridge
Funder: The Monument Trust and The University of Cambridge
Representative Users: Cambridge Judge Business School
Strategic Project Manager and Funders Representative: Stuart A. Johnson Consulting Ltd
Project Manager and Supervisor: Currie & Brown
Main Contractor: SDC Builders Ltd
Architect: Stanton Williams
Civil Engineer and Structural Engineers: AKT II Building Services Engineer: Arup
Quantity Surveyor: Gardiner & Theobald