Cambridge Room

Cambridge Room - Ideas Competition and Logo Design Winner Revealed

We can announce the winner of the Cambridge Room competition! The competition attracted 17 wonderfully creative entries from far and wide, including students, academic staff, aspiring and practicing architects from Cambridge. The judging panel was impressed with the ingenuity and efforts all participants put into their work, and decided on a winner, a runner-up and four commended submissions. The winner will receive £500 prize honorarium and help to curate events in the Cambridge Room. The winner was Victoria, Eric, Pawel & Luciano from Allies & Morrison Cambridge Studio, and runner up Alex, Brg & Liam from Neubau. Congratulations to all! This exciting news is shared on AJ: Winner of Cambridge urban room contest revealed (architectsjournal.co.uk)

Victoria Fabron, Eric Martin, Pawel Pietkun and Luciano Ingenito from the Cambridge studio of Allies and Morrison won the overall top prize for their ‘evolving kit of parts’ proposal.

Praised by judges as a ‘beautiful, clear and accurate’ concept, the portable kit of parts could be used to furnish a permanent room for discussion or be ‘carried between different locations for peripheral or pop-up events’.

Alex Giarlis, Brg Lenz and Liam Cooke of Neubau were named runners-up and commendations were awarded to LDA Design of Cambridge; Simon Bumstead of Studio Snaap; Kyriaki Kasabalis, Darius Woo of Kasawoo and David Valinsky; and a collaboration between Kelly MacKinnon, Laura McClorey and Jess Mulvey.

*Click on the submission image below to enlarge & click on the name of the architects to their website.

The Winner: Victoria, Eric, Pawel & Luciano from

Allies & Morrison Cambridge Studio

The Runner Up: Alex, Brg & Liam from Neubau

Commendations:

LDA Design

Studio SNAAP

Kasawoo

KMLMJM

“The room is the beginning of architecture”

(Louis Kahn, The Room, the Street, and Human Agreement, 1971)

Cambridge Room - Ideas Competition and Logo Design

The Cambridge Association of Architects in partnership with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge City Council and South Cambridge District Council are setting up an Urban Room for Cambridge.

An Urban Room is a space where people can come together to help create a future for their local area. The idea came from the 2013 Farrell Review and during the past ten years it developed in different ways across the UK and translated in each city according to their own specific character.

Competition Brief:

We are asking our members to help us imagine what the new Cambridge Room could include and how we can start thinking about the village or city and the nature around and within them.

The room can be a specific or an abstract space, a single permanent location or many temporary pop ups. Unleash your creativity and share your vision with us.

We are also looking for a logo, which would capture the spirit of the Room and will be used to identify it and represent us on the shopfront of the physical space.

The ideas can take shape as a model, a sketch, a drawing or a poem, any media is welcomed as long as it can fit on one A3 sheet (portrait) in PDF format, no larger than 3Mb.

Please also include a short paragraph explaining your idea and the logo.

The submission should include your name, contact email and whether you are a student (RIBA part 1/2) or a practising architect.

Deadline:

Submissions should be sent by 5pm 22 December 2023 to email: urbanroom@cambridgearchitects.org

Prize:

The winner will receive a £500 prize honorarium and a chance to help us curate events in the Cambridge Room.

All submissions will be published in the Cambridge Architecture gazette with further publication and social media via the RIBA, University of Cambridge department of architecture, Cambridge City and South Cambridge councils.

The judging panel will include:

Flora Samuel, Head of the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge

Tumi Hawkins, South Cambridge Lead Cabinet member for Planning

Katie Thornburrow, Cambridge City Council Executive Councillor for Planning, Building Control and Infrastructure

Peter Studdert, Independent town planner and former Director of Planning at Cambridge City Council

Ze’ev Feigis, Architect and Cambridge Association of Architects committee member

Cambridge Room - A Place in the Making

The Cambridge Room is a joint initiative to form an ‘Urban Room’ - a physical space where people can come together to understand, debate and participate in the creation of their local area.

The term was coined ten years ago by Sir Terry Farrell in a national review of architecture and the built environment commissioned by the government (see https://farrellreview.co.uk), which suggested that ‘every town and city without an architecture and built environment centre should have an “urban room” where the past, present and future of that place can be inspected.’

Although they specific to each city, most Urban Rooms share the same basic principles, such as:

● Focus on the shared built environment - streets, neighbourhoods and public spaces.

● Open-door inclusivity - all welcome, especially those who are traditionally under-represented in decision making about our villages, towns and cities.

● Exploration through creative activities - prompt curiosity and fresh thinking.

● ‘On-site’, that is, located in the places that are being discussed

The aim of the ‘Cambridge Room’ is to raise the quality of the built and natural environment for the benefit of all through collective action and better access to the planning and consultation process.

We took out the word ‘urban’ from the name because much of the greater Cambridge area is also rural, and the villages and sites of South and East Cambridge are forming an inseparable fabric together with the city, interwoven by the fens, the fields and waterways.

Our region is a vibrant hub of financial growth, raising national and international interest. We pride ourselves on excellence, but Cambridge is one of the most unequal cities in the UK.

While education, investment and innovation drive success, we want to allow everyone to remember our past, understand the changes we are going through in the present and have a say about the way we would live in a sustainable future.

We have formed a not-for-profit partnership between the Cambridge Association of Architects as the local chapter of the RIBA, the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge City Council and South Cambs District Council.

The aim of this partnership, which is run as a charity, is to act as an independent and unbiased agent aimed to connect between the local residents, institutions, developers and PLACE (Planning, Landscape, Architecture, Conservation and Engineering) professionals.

The Room is supported by the Urban Rooms Network (https://urbanroomsnetwork.org/) and we are constantly learning from our colleagues’ experiences and initiatives. Cambridge is lucky to have a deep and wide breadth of international academic knowledge and we aim to invite such expertise to help us reflect on our place among global trends and discourse.

Creating the physical space is our next challenge, and in the meanwhile we have put together an initial charter, which intends to map our values and our way forward: https://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/research/urban-room-cambridge

Please have a look and if you wish to share your thoughts and ideas with us please write to: urbanroom@cambridgearchitects.org