Norfolk Terrace And Attached Walkways, At The University Of East Anglia

Norfolk Terrace and Attached Walkways, at the University of East Anglia

Six linked blocks of student accommodation with facilities for resident tutors, built 1964–1968 by Denys Lasdun and Partners. The practice was commissioned in April 1962 to produce a master plan for the new University of East Anglia, founded in 1960, on a 165-acre site of parkland on the edge of Norwich, flanked by the River Yare (later dammed to form a lake around 1977).

The structure employs cross wall concrete construction with precast panels made on site. External walls are 10 inches thick, with 6-inch loadbearing crosswalls within. Internal joints are recessed; external joints have neoprene baffle and damp proof backing. The roof is made from Siporex precast concrete units. Although the building rises seven storeys with a service tower, the sloping site means no part exceeds five storeys at any single point.

The defining feature is the stepped, zigzag section, with each block positioned at 90 degrees to the next, creating the familiar name "ziggurat". Each block contains a 90-degree corner ending in a concrete gargoyle. Each floor accommodates one flat housing up to twelve students: ten single rooms and one shared unit in the concave angle, with a shared kitchen in the projecting corner. Bathrooms and storage occupy the rear. Smaller flats for graduates and resident tutors sit at the top of each block. Floors are progressively set back, with each lower flat's roof level aligned with the sill of the flat above. This creates shorter ceiling heights in the rear section and consequently shorter access stairs of twelve steps between floors. Internal staircases at the centre of each block lead from each flat to a rear walkway at the level of the uppermost flat (though only the third floor at the rear), overlooking bicycle and car parking areas. Escape stairs of dog-leg form, constructed in shuttered concrete, are positioned at each end of the range. Continuous timber windows face south, each in two halves with a horizontal sliding section, forming a striking composition of stepped-back verticals and repetitive horizontal grid. Students' units feature fitted cupboards to the rear of each room.

Lasdun was determined to preserve the flat, marshy and very open valley landscape. The line of ziggurats, positioned where the valley begins to rise, embodies this concept. His aim was the "five minute university" where departments and student accommodation would be concentrated on a compact site—a principle developed concurrently but independently in North America, particularly Canada, and adopted also at Leeds through the "ten minute university" scheme by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in 1960. Both universities embraced the continuous teaching block. Lasdun's scheme, published in May 1963, proposed development of up to 6,000 people over fifteen years, showing the ziggurats and long spinal teaching block in recognisable but more complex and extensive form than ultimately built.

The accommodation of students in independent flats rather than within a collegiate system marked a new departure in allowing greater freedom within a "family unit" of peers. The stepped form draws on Sant'Elia's drawings for "Casa a gradinate" and Marcel Breuer's 1928 hospital scheme at Elberfeld, which featured a stepped section and upper gallery for rear access. The expression of services as rooftop sculpture reflects Lasdun's awareness of Louis Kahn's Richards Medical Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania and his own earlier projects. His scheme for Churchill College, Cambridge (1960) had already employed similar terraces, as did his built work at Christ's College and proposals for the Cripps Building at St John's (both Cambridge, 1962). Sir Leslie Martin at Cambridge and Leicester had similarly experimented with stepped terraces.

The University of East Anglia was Britain's first and most successful expression of a university as a small city rather than a dispersed campus, and proved influential internationally, particularly on architects including Giancarlo de Carlo and members of Team 10 (Josic, Candilis, and Woods), who shared Lasdun's interest in clustered communities.