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With its pervading sense of tradition, a Cambridge college can be an intimidating client. Evans & Shalev's new block for Jesus College relates to the existing buildings with skill and restraint, writes Kieran Long.
The collegiate buildings of Oxford and Cambridge have been great opportunities for good contemporary architecture over the centuries. The roll call of architects who have worked on college buildings since the war is an impressive one. But a commission can be a double- edged sword. Almost the whole of Cambridge is a conservation area, and the neighbours are usually wealthy, highly-educated and apt to complain at the merest sniff of concrete in their leafy locale.
This is the context within which Evans & Shalev has designed student accommodation as the second stage of a masterplan for Jesus College, Cambridge. The accommodation forms the third side of a new court for the college - the practice's 1996 Quincentenary Library formed the second side. The masterplan was decided by the college itself. The college also suggested the traditional palette of materials that has been used for both the library and the new student accommodation, which opened this academic year.
The chapel and cloister of Jesus College date from the 12th century, when it was a Benedictine nunnery. The nunnery was requisitioned by Henry VIII in the early 16th century, and the buildings used to found the college. A sense of history pervades the place, as you would expect. Oxbridge colleges fetishise their buildings, conserving them and adding extra buildings like jewels to a crown. They do not upstage the centrepieces, but are almost always of high quality.
There is a sense in these colleges that generations of students have made their small but perceptible mark on the buildings, and one feels this strongly at Jesus. As you walk in the main entrance towards the porter's lodge (known as "the chimney"), the step on the threshold of the college's grounds is worn down about three inches by the feet of hundreds of years of students. It deliberately intimidates and reassures those entering the college. It seems obvious to point out, but this step will never be replaced....