Churchill College revisit

Cambridge, UK

This article has been updated from a similar text from October 2020, which explored the courts at Churchill College and the competition for the college. A key interest of mine during the thesis was how collegiate architecture could manifest different scales of human association from the student, to the group, to the college, to the university as a whole using a hierarchy of architectural elements such as staircases, oriel windows, and courts - therefore mediating between the individual and the collective.

Churchill College is rare amongst Cambridge colleges as a purpose-built institution realised ex nihilo, without centuries of accretive expansion, and unencumbered by the density and grain of the city around it which is typical of older colleges. It was designed to be complete in its first phase of construction, but still conforms to a clear structuring principle which could govern future expansion.

The built form of Churchill College resembles three clusters of quadrangular blocks linked around a central court. The arrangement of the courts snaps to a planning grid, with each cluster of three or four courts themselves aggregated around three corners of an implicit square, placing them as subsets of the wider college plan. This has the effect of rendering the residential courts as the typical boundary wall which surrounds and forms the fabric of historic colleges of Cambridge, while enclosing a central precinct of buildings.

Within the centre of the college the primary functions are scattered in the open ‘field’ of the main court, as objects in the round. The main ceremonial functions of the college, such as the dining hall, library, lecture theatre and student common rooms, are individuated by their own discrete buildings separate from the residential accommodation, a move which separates them from traditional college layouts. Most at odds with tradition is the remote location of the chapel at the western edge of the site, whereas the chapel conventionally occupies a privileged position in the main court.

Churchill College is distinguished from the older colleges by its surrounding landscape - i.e the manicured plot comprised of former agricultural land on which the college was built, since terraced into level sports fields. The vast expanse of lawn cascades gradually from the western edge of the site furthest from the college and sweeps into the college courts, entering the open space between the court-clusters and the freestanding ceremonial buildings.

The rectilinear regularity of the plot sets it apart from the historic colleges embedded in the city fabric, whose irregular plots and periodic land acquisition over time had resulted in a truly urban web of intersecting courts of varied scale, character and era. In spite of its apparent lack of natural features, the scheme makes good use of the landscape, in creating a subtle gradation of character from east to west, from a picturesque setting offering a outlook over the full college site, to the more controlled scenographic and intimate landscape of the college courts. The positioning of small architectural aedicules within the college grounds, against the backdrop of mature planting, punctuates the experience of the landscape with small satellites of the college itself, always oriented toward the college centre.

Beginning the route at the eastern range of the site, around the structured experience of courts and set-piece buildings within the landscape, this route moves through the college from Storey’s Way. This is the most theatrical architectural moment within the whole college ensemble. A student arrives at the college having skirted the southern range of courts, part way along the road they meet the primary - and only - discernible axis within the college complex and turn perpendicular to the road. There they are confronted by the symmetrical gatehouse and porter’s lodge on axis.

Two large planes of brickwork flank the front gate of the college, itself designed like a portcullis. The lodge can only be approached by crossing a symbolic drawbridge over a wide rectangular moat to a forecourt enclosed on three sides by the college. In reality neither feature is truly defensive, but the theatricality is still imposing, and many competitors designed great earthworks, lakes and moats, and worked their designs to resemble defensive barricades in accordance with the perceived insularity of the Cambridge college type.

The intersection of the collegiate realm and the outside world is here manifested by the portico of the lodge, where, at the top of a low flight of steps, the student crosses into the secluded world of the college. The drama of this moment draws on architectural antecedent, where a gatehouse traditionally amplifies the significance of crossing from the outside to the rarefied domain of the interior, and in doing so aggrandises the institution it controls access to. The symbolism of the event at Churchill is a reminder of the college’s reticence to depart from and challenge traditional modes of collegiate living, and only once within the college precinct does the axial arrival sequence dissolve into a labyrinthine network of pathways, routes and spaces belied by the monumentality of the gatehouse.

In a departure from the prevailing model of the Cambridge college, where passing through the gatehouse you enter directly into the primary court, at Churchill this reveal is delayed by a crossroads off the main axis. Ahead, an internal concourse on two levels subverts the expected release of arriving directly into a court, as the architects chose to pursue a hybrid structure of court and linear spine. Instead of arriving into the formal landscape of the court, the view is telescoped out down the wide processional corridor of the spine, and far out to the lawn beyond.

This spine orders the main functions of the college, it acts as a street for the ceremonial activity of the college. Instead of emerging into the court, you notice it obliquely to the side, either out of the windows of the concourse, or, if you turn left at the crossroads via a covered colonnade, by following the raised path which circumscribes the main court.

Following the second route, towards the south cluster of the residential courts, the character of the space segues from the monumental arrival axis to a more intimate sequence of spaces which frequently open and close long and short-range views through the courts. As you approach the first court, orbiting clockwise around the large court - which can be understood as the college’s centre of gravity - an altogether more medieval arrangement of spaces become available.

These spaces more closely represent collegiate archetypes of a medieval grain of tight passages and incedental spaces, allowing Churchill to oscillate between the grandiose and the informal. Within the smaller courts, the cloister idea is allowed to totally govern the spatial logic of the plan. Three-sided raised ambulatory spaces around the ground floor of the court serve to give access to staircases leading up to the accommodation above, however, the functional purpose of the walkway - to give access to the staircase - is dignified by the significance accorded to the act of processing through these spaces.

In most colleges the idea of collegiality is generated by the intensity of adjoining functions of differing degrees of formality and heterogeneity in close proximity to one another. At Churchill, where the zoning of the ceremonial functions segregates the residential and the communal, collegiality is generated not by organisational means, but by a fabric of formal and informal processional spaces at ground level which encourage encounters between members of the college.

The staircase model, which generates many front doors at ground level creates frequent subsidiary branches leading to the accommodation off the main ambulatory route, all these branches converge together locally in each court-cluster’s main square. The various pathways and absence of a linear, predefined route creates opportunities for spontaneous interaction, spaces for small and large groups to assemble, and a host of differing degrees of privacy and participation.

The permeation of the raised ambulatory idea through the courts is realised to such a degree that in some areas the ground floor is nothing more than an open undercroft below the accommodation block suspended overhead, where the ground floor accommodation is eroded away entirely it enables limited ‘external’ views from within the courts. Horizontality of movement becomes a defining spatial condition of the college.

The generosity of the cloister is regularly counterposed by enclosed spaces and sudden dog-legs and alleyways which punctuate the experience of processing through the courts with a varied spatial encounters which have parallels in urban situations, such as city streets. This alternating rhythm of solid to void typifies the experience of moving through the courts, translating the repetitive action of walking through the courts with specific localised spatial events, moments of compression, and moments of release.

The labyrinthine structure and cadence of these outdoor enclosed spaces, whilst disorienting, deconstructs the scale of the college into more localised episodes, which gives primacy to the lived experience of the student and their perception of the college through movement, rather than the projection of a singular iconic image of the court from within. Churchill eschews the iconic in favour of the generic - a metaphor for communitarian living.

Remaining on the ground level, it is not clear where the networks of pathways truly end, they all orbit and re-orient one back to the centre, there is no prescribed terminus. A ball of yarn might be a useful accesory for orientating yourself. However, if you depart from the path, and its circuitous route which pervades the whole college structure, and move inward into the main court, or even venture beyond the college precinct entirely up Madingley Rise, the spatial cadence shifts from the pulsating rhythm of space in the courts, to the expansive space as defined by the lawn.

From here the student can appreciate the courts as ranges as their modular structure coalesces into an indistinct mass, and the granular network of internal walkways becomes obscured. Following the treeline to the far end of the grounds, on the raised plateau shared by the chapel and couples’ flats, you can turn back to face the college and see it in its entirety.

From this point the college is tangible as a singular static entity, a linear four storey belt of brick interrupted by the taller mass of the dining hall meld into a readily identifiable assemblage. Over the low horizon of the college, the student can see to the Cambridge skyline a mile beyond, so that from the remote curtilage of the chapel, they are able to clearly define the image of the college to which they belong as a single domain and orient themselves in relation to the city and colleges beyond. To register this moment, a sculpture of a mother and child by Dhruva Mistry is placed overlooking the college.

Returning to inside the court. In contrast to the homogenous external flank of the college, the ways by which each court is made individual are varied: in the first instance through the particular plan of its specific ground plane. Some of the ambulatory spaces are open to the larger central court, others are enclosed, some give access on three sides, others only give access to opposite sides, some pathways lead around to the next cluster, whilst others reveal themselves only to be a cul-de-sac.

What is common spatially to each cluster is that they all consist of two larger courts around a sunken lawn separated by a smaller, court centred on a paved square, forming a nucleated, dumbbell-like plan on a repetitive planning module. In spite of the ostensibly regular formal arrangement of the courts, each cloister is individuated enough to become a world of its own.

Above and below the porous plane of movement of the open cloister, further eccentricity is introduced in the particular landscaping of each court, and the irregular arrangement of oriel windows around the residential accommodation above. Passing through each one of the sunken courts along the raised ambulatory space, the student passes through specific ‘biomes’ which help to distinguish one court from the next. Now in its maturity, the planting within each court lends a specificity to each one of the ten residential courts, in some cases manicured and others overgrown, the student who passes through the courts in succession will find themselves moving from one small world to another.

In some areas, where the original trees are still in situ and mature, the canopy creates a complete ceiling to the court, enclosing the court from above. The richness of this environment is elevated by the positioning of artwork within the court, which transforms the raised pathway into something of a gallery for the landscape and art assembled within. Often the sculpture is placed at the end of a long ‘enfilade’ view between the piloti on which the buildings are raised, this has the effect of telescoping the view through multiple courts and always suggesting the presence of spaces beyond.

It is in this collection of picturesque devices and the concentration of each small court around its own particular garden that elicits the inevitable association with the romantic ideals of the hortus conclusus, or walled garden, whereby each court flourishes into its own otherworldly eden.

With limited exceptions, in the context of the Cambridge college typology, an arboreal court is something of an anomaly. In a move away from tradition, whereby the court is usually a clear space devoid of planting and consisting of linear pathways traversing the open expanse, the Churchill court is instead a square of ‘captured’ landscape circumscribed on all sides by the residential rooms and raised ambulatory.

This small world of the court is shared by the community of students whose rooms are banked around the edges of the walled garden. Above the open ground plane the four walls which define the court are jettied out to the line of the platform, creating between them a more compressed cubic space than the more amorphous plan of the ground floor - a pure square superimposed over a pixellated plan.

Despite the clear delineation of the space of the court above the ground floor, each room projects an oriel window out beyond this line, jettying the rooms out even further above the lawn, and concentrating all vistas out on the space of the court. A number of projection types animate the facades of the courts and ranges, not just oriel bays for a single student room, but all manner of functions and bay types project over the court. The inevitable over-articulation of the surface is compounded by the junctions between structural members, which are tectonically held apart apparently to break down the megastructure of the court-cluster into more readily recognisable forms.

The court above the ground floor is enlivened by the varied oriel arrangements and types, taken together with the individuality of the landscaping, it renders each court visually unique. Seen as a constellation of bays projecting out over the court, the oriel represents the threshold between the private world of the student, and the space of shared participation, which is the court.

The intent of the filter zone of the oriel window, its generous opening and heated terrazzo banquette inside, was to project a limited impression of the particular interior world of the student to the small commons of the court. In reality, the intimate scale of the landscaped courts, and even more so in the smaller paved courts - without any shielding vegetation - proved too close-quarters for most students, whose curtains are rarely drawn back to their full extent.

Ironically, on the outward facing elevations, where the conditions for shared participation are diminished but the overlooking distances extended, students are content to open up their rooms to the exterior and draw back the curtains. During the design development the courts were enlarged pre-empting the feeling of claustrophobia of Sheppard’s original design; whereby the courts had been designed with intimacy in mind so that a student could call out from their room and be heard by a student on the far side of the court.

Notwithstanding the question of privacy, the oriel window becomes the architectural mode of expression for the individual student, and, looking across the elevation of each range of the court, the student body becomes quantifiable, reified on the face of the building.

This mosaic of individual oriels becomes animated under the right conditions, and the courts gain their vitality from students using the oriel window to read, sit or work projected out over the court, (or into the landscape) engaged as part of a performative ritual of collegiate life.

The animated void of the court assimilates the individual representation of each student into a visible manifestation of the student body as a greater part of the whole. In other words, the inward orientation of the oriels in turn establish each court as a locus as part of the college community, and the transition of scales from the individual, to the court grouping, to the college becomes apparent.

A key component of that community, which many competitors did not deviate from, is staircase access to rooms. The staircase model familiar to the Cambridge college typology removes the requirement for corridor access to bedrooms and the preference for such was a steer to competitors in the brief.

At Churchill each court is served by five or six staircases with four staircases situated at each corner of the plan and two along offset along the length of the plan. This compact arrangement, stacked over three floors (sometimes with ground floor accommodation) creates vertical groupings of rooms directly accessed from the staircase, establishing small groups of around 10 students and fellows. By breaking the dominant horizontal plane of movement, the staircases announce the arrival to the smallest social grouping within the college, marking a shift to a more personal scale.

Standard bedrooms, comprising a single study room, and ‘sets’ consisting of bedrooms with a separate study and living rooms, are interspersed around the plan, further contributing to the individuality of each court, and, at a smaller scale, of each staircase. Under this model, ‘front doors’ at ground level are shared between students and fellows, meaning that younger and more experienced members of the college coexist side by side as a vital component of collegiate life.

Each set of rooms radiate from the staircases, and due to their position at the corner of the plan, the result is that a student may not necessarily overlook their own court, i.e the court from which they accessed their staircase, moreover their view may not even be of a court at all. Nevertheless, the manifestation of community sizes is quite apparent under this model; and so the student is aware of the social groups to which they belong under the architectural hierarchy of their landing, to their staircase, to their court, to their cluster, to their college, and finally to the university as a whole.

Therefore, the student is able to orient themselves to the college as a whole with the architecture facilitating this self-identification, this amounts to an attempt to allows students to situate themselves as part of a larger society, an attribute which marks the quintessence of a collegiate community. The college court can be understood as a means by which to foster socialisation and a particular collective identity at a number of scales, situating the student within the student body and providing the armature for them to establish the extent of their physical integration.

The student’s ability to establish a self-identity within a large institution parallels tendencies within post-war university planning, concerning the individual and their corresponding position in the society of the university.

The physical college can be seen as an intermediary to achieve this utopianist end. Specifically at Churchill College, in its adaptation of the college archetype, the clarity of the social hierarchy of the individual to the institution is not so much a matter of interpreting a social scale but positioning the student as part of broader social networks and places of shared participation.

In the creation of a self-contained and informal collegiality based on the clusters of humanely scaled courts and separate ceremonial functions, the college introduces a new conception of the archetype ‘campus’, a microcosmic society materialised as a formal structure.

The closed nature of the college, and the urban nature of the campus here elide to construct a very particular social composition, that of a small polity whose boundaries are apprehensible to the individuals who inhabit it. The concentration of the collegiate campus attempts to reify the post-war conception of utopia under the idea of an identifiable collection buildings representing an ideal community as an integrated whole, giving rise to a resonance of architecture and the society it represents.