Feilden Fowles completes the timber-framed dining hall at the University of Cambridge
Architecture studio in London Feilden Fowles has constructed a timber-framed dining hall with a faience-tiled volume situated above a pigmented-concrete colonnade at the University of Cambridge's Homerton College. The dining hall features the main eating space, as well as a smaller room for eating called a buttery, kitchens, and staff amenities, and was designed to reflect the adjacent arts and crafts-style Ibberson Building and the college's Victorian Gothic Revival structures.
The structure was created by the London-based studio of Fergus Feilden and Edmund Fowles to replace Cambridge's youngest college's former dining hall and dark, cramped, and obsolete kitchen facilities. The college relocated to the site in 1894 from its previous location in east London, and it now occupies many buildings built for Cavendish College in the 1870s.
Edmund Fowles, director of Feilden Fowles, said the hall's design was reflective of Homerton's modern attitude and daring objectives while still being in conversation with Cambridge's rich architectural legacy. There were echoes of King's College Chapel's marching buttresses, references to Homerton's Cavendish College buildings' Victorian Gothic Revival, and themes from the nearby arts and crafts Ibberson Building. They come together as a symbol of contemporary architectural thinking, an embodiment of low-tech principles, and 21st-century arts and crafts. The structure is intended to serve as a social hub for the college campus, with a number of courtyards and cloisters surrounding it, providing informal gathering spaces for unexpected encounters. The ground floor plinth is made of pigmented concrete, with columns spaced on a three-meter grid to give the elevations a logical and orderly appearance.
The structure is partially coated with green faience tiles that reference the arts and crafts movement while also complementing the college's previous buildings, particularly the Great Hall, which are made of red brick, sandstone, lead, and oxidized copper. The 3,200 tiles were created in collaboration with architectural ceramics manufacturer Darwen Terracotta and may be found on numerous Victorian public buildings in the United Kingdom. The architecture studio went on to say that the design