Journal

I know. You’re busy. There’s a million things to do before Christmas. But if you have time, slow things down a notch, breathe, relax, and just take a moment to appreciate an elegant modern intervention that does nothing more than simply reinforce a quiet historic street.

Sure, there are a lot of things it doesn’t do. It doesn’t redefine architecture, it’s not a treatise or manifesto, nor an experiment in form and space, it doesn’t ask us to reflect on what it means to be human or recalibrate our understanding of self. It doesn’t use cutting edge materials, or parametric design, it’s not ‘innovative’, it doesn’t seek to make a statement, be a landmark, or compete for your attention.

You could easily miss it.

The street is Mill Lane in Cambridge. The building is an addition to Pembroke College by Haworth Tompkins; one of a collection of buildings by them that provides a new entrance to the college along with new buildings focused around a series of courtyards and gardens.

What the building does do is use high quality materials, carefully detailed with depth, craft, subtlety, care, order and composition to gently enhance and reinforce the street. It’s built to last. I suspect the building might still be there in 300 years with people strolling past, barely noticing it, but feeling gently uplifted, their lives a little more joyful for having walked down this beautiful lane. It’s a reminder that place-making first and foremost comes from place-understanding and doesn’t have to mean attention-grabbing.

In a polarised world of click-bait, bash-you-over-the-head, look-at-me-look-at-me, image-led, AI-generated architecture, this is a building that speaks softly. It’s nothing fancy, just the ultimate background architecture.