Allies and Morrison’s Passivhaus student village for St John’s College, Cambridge, offers a quietly persuasive model for academic institutions grappling with the demands of net zero, student wellbeing, and urban integration.

Words
Jonny Anstead
Photos
Fred Howarth and Jack Hobhouse

Cambridge’s largest Passivhaus student development, Hinsley Lane, accommodates 245 undergraduates and postgraduates across 39 shared townhouses. Commissioned by St John’s College, Cambridge, and designed by Allies and Morrison, the scheme offers a thoughtful alternative to the more standardised ‘pile-em high’ model that dominates the UK student housing sector. A series of red-brick terraces set within a sequence of shared gardens, it recalls the scale and sociability of a traditional college setting, and yet it sits quietly within a leafy, low-density suburb on the city’s inner western edge.

Just two kilometres west of Cambridge city centre, Hinsley Lane nevertheless feels distinctly peripheral. The site lies within a relatively undeveloped part of Cambridge, an area shaped by college ownership and a semi-rural character that have resisted the urbanisation seen in other parts of the city. Known historically as Grange Farm, the site once formed part of St John’s agricultural estate, supplying produce to the University. In more recent years it has become a patchwork of orchard remnants, scrubland and mature trees, including a hedgerow aligned with the route of an old Roman road – features that now form a naturalistic backdrop to the new development.

The lane is abutted by carefully detailed three-storey gable ends punctuated by outbuildings and chimneys. Shared gardens can be glimpsed through brick archways and metal railings on low brick walls.

The site falls partly within the West Cambridge Conservation Area, a protected enclave of red-brick, Arts & Crafts houses set within leafy informal plots. Described in the Conservation Area Appraisal as “an effusion of green… fusing the area together”, this part of Cambridge is characterised as much by its landscape as its architecture. Hinsley Lane had been earmarked for some form of college-based housing by the 2006 Local Plan, but it was not until 2019 that St John’s College began to bring forward proposals for the site, settling on a model that would focus on the needs of postgraduate students, either for its own use or to lease to other colleges. In practice, the completed development accommodates students from St John’s, Lucy Cavendish, and Clare Hall, creating an unusually mixed academic community in a city defined by college distinctiveness.

Allies and Morrison was selected as architect and landscape designer through a design competition in 2020, and drew in their proposals on deep familiarity with Cambridge, and in particular its prior experience of designing college housing over several decades, including the Rosalind Franklin Building for Newnham College (1995), and Cranmer Road, a Passivhaus-certified development for King’s College (2021).

The masterplan is driven by two principal moves: first, the creation of a new pedestrian- priority route, Hinsley Lane, linking Wilberforce Road to the north and Herschel Road to the south; and the arrangement of eight terraces branching off this central spine, each consisting of between four and eight low-energy townhouses. These are interspersed with communal gardens, establishing a rhythm of built form and shared green space.

The orientation of the terraces is a key part of the environmental strategy. Houses are arranged north-south, so that every house benefits from a predominantly south- facing rear elevation. Shading is integrated through bay windows and treillage, while asymmetrical roof pitches, steeper to the north, shallower to the south, allow light to penetrate deeper into the gardens and create a pleasant distinction between fronts and backs.

Linear, communal gardens run between terraces, fronted to the south and backed to the north. Each is anchored by one or more mature trees – oaks, yews, apples and chestnuts – retained from the site’s previous life. These are complemented by simple landscape treatments: bound-gravel paths, swales, timber benches and meadow planting. The result is a landscape of soft edges, more parkland than college court, and an informality that contrasts positively with the buildings.

Beyond the immediate communal gardens, the landscape transitions to looser, more naturalistic areas. The hedgerow that traces the Roman road has been retained and a woodland path now connects to a small copse at the southern end of the site. This hierarchy from formal garden to orchard to woodland creates a remarkable sense of immersion in nature that will clearly be valued by residents.

Households of four-to-seven create groups that are small enough to foster relationships and large enough to offer diversity. Living spaces are bright and well-proportioned, with open-plan kitchens and long dining tables that can seat an entire household in a single sitting.

In many ways, Hinsley Lane shies from attention: it is serene and restrained, a place of profound tranquillity, that is somehow set apart from the world. More than anything, it is a place that is tuned to support wellbeing and help students do their best work. But it is also a powerful example of institutional landowners taking a long-term view. As universities grapple with the demands of net zero, student wellbeing, and urban integration, Hinsley Lane offers a quietly persuasive model of how architecture might rise to the challenge.

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