Fitzwilliam College, New Court

Fitzwilliam College, New Court

Residential accommodation blocks designed by MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard, built between 1984 and 1986 for Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

The buildings are constructed of blue-brown brick laid in stretcher bond with white concrete dressings, and the roofs are covered in metal sheets. The L-shaped plan of New Court follows the western boundary of the college and includes Staircases Q to T. At the north, Q staircase connects to Lasdun's 1966 accommodation blocks. At the south-east, T staircase adjoins Allies and Morrison's 2003 Gatehouse Court. With some variations, each staircase contains eight bedrooms and one communal kitchen per floor.

The buildings rise three storeys high and their materials and storey heights continue those of the adjacent Lasdun accommodation blocks to the north. Each floor is stepped over three planes, creating corner windows in every bedroom, each with a projecting roof over a small clerestorey window. At ground and first floor, these small roofs have rain chains feeding integral planters. Small waterspouts have been moulded into the sills and bands across the exterior of the building to manage rainwater disposal. Despite this apparent variety, every staircase is symmetrically planned with the pattern repeating across each unit. The entrance to each staircase is centrally positioned and forms a two-storey feature with the large kitchen windows of the floor above. The eaves of the metal-clad roof project over a recessed clerestorey which runs the length of the entire building. The roof itself is pitched, with regularly spaced lanterns along its ridge.

The rear or west elevations facing Wychfield Lane are equally stepped, varied and detailed, though without the major feature of the entrances at the centre of each staircase block. The only major break in the pattern of the external elevations occurs on the south elevation, where S and T staircases connect. Here the building confronts the blank exterior of the Squash Courts (1981, designed by David Roberts and Geoffrey Clarke). In deference to that building, New Court reduces its thickness to a single pile and ceases its restless series of projections and recessions. The major features of this elevation are a timber-clad staircase and two glazed corridors at the first and second floors.

Each staircase unit has a central stair hall. At the first floor landing this branches into four symmetrical stairs: two small flights lead into the first floor corridors, and two separate, longer flights lead up to the second floor. The walls of each flight are lined in oak veneer panels and bands of lacquered wood. The steps themselves are tiled, and at the centre of the stair hall is a deep light well, flooded with daylight from roof lanterns. In the middle of the open volume at the centre of the well is a light fitting: a wood and steel grill with a mirrored glass sphere at its centre. At each level there is a communal kitchen shared by up to eight students, centrally positioned but arranged differently according to the changing plan of each floor.

On either side of the stair well on each floor is a lobby providing access to four bedrooms. On the first floor these have fitted benches and an internal window that borrows light from the floor below. Bedrooms have oak doors, fitted cupboards with black wooden frames that match black dado and picture rails, and the black timber supports of the corner window and its roof structure. Second floor rooms have exposed timber roof structures.