Storey’s Field Centre, North West Cambridge Cambridge, United Kingdom

By bob

Storey’s Field Centre, North West Cambridge

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bob

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Led by the University of Cambridge, the Northwest Cambridge Development is a housebuilding and landscaping project covering a 141 hectares site on the outskirts of the city. In addition to providing housing for approximately 5000 private residents, keyworker University staff, students, and post graduates, the new village is serviced by a primary school, a supermarket and shops, a health centre, and a community hub – Storey’s Field Centre.

Sound Space Vision, appointed to work with architects MUMA on the Centre’s meeting rooms, concentrated on the Main Hall. The brief from the outset was for the Storey’s Field Centre to be ‘a building of the highest calibre’, and envisaged as a social hub serving everything from Zumba classes, Brownie meetings, and parties, to lectures by Nobel Prize-winners, and rehearsals and performances by local and professional choirs, ensembles and bands.

SSV designed an invitingly warm acoustic environment for the Hall that is comfortable for conversation and spoken word, and flexible for music through the adjustment of motorised acoustic banners. We also created performance lighting, sound and projection systems in the Hall which are robust, high-quality and straightforward to use.

The result is a stunning triple-height Hall complete with fully-sprung floor and technical control gallery; a Hall that offers local residents an excellent resource on their doorstep to host youth theatre groups, storytelling nights, community choirs or film clubs, etc., and a small-scale venue to welcome professional performers.

Storey’s Field Centre was completed in February 2018 and is already the heart of its new community.

The building won AJ’s 2018 Design of the Year Architecture Prize, was shortlisted for the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize, and won two 2019 Civic Trust Awards, including a Special Award for Sustainability.