Maggie's Cambridge Receives Planning
April 2025
The Maggie's Centre in Cambridge has won planning permission. The purpose-built structure will replace an existing, temporary Maggie’s Centre which, since 2012, has been housed within a converted key worker residential block.
Maggie’s chief executive Laura Lee said: ‘We've worked closely with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for many years to ensure people with cancer across the Cambridgeshire area, as well as those who love them, have had free expert support at our interim centre.
‘It is wonderful to now be a step closer to building a centre designed with people living with cancer in mind.’
You can read the Architect's Journal article about the centre here.
Balliol College, Sports Pavilion
November 2019
7:45 AM, London Bridge. The train from Uckfield just entered the station and is spitting out hundreds of commuters, flowing past us. We hop on the now empty train and leave London to visit our timber sub-contractor’s workshop in East Sussex.
We are fast approaching the construction stage of our Sports Pavilion project for Balliol College in Oxford and were invited to review a mock-up of the roof structure. The pavilion roof is formed of slender sweet chestnut glulam joists; 10 layers are stacked on top of each other, each layer cantilevering further into the space, creating a coffer.
1:50 model
From outside the roof structure expresses itself as a lantern, popping up in the centre of the building. The lantern is fully glazed, allowing for rays of sunshine to enter through the stacked glulam. In the evening, the dense timber lattice will be highlighted by a subtle glow, originating from LED strips, that are recessed in the top of the glulam joists.
The mock-up in Inwood’s (timber sub-contractor) workshop
Lighting strategy detail plan and section
The mock-up was used to test the connection details between the individual layers of glulam, the construction sequence, and the integration of the LED strips and the associated wiring. Preceding the assembly of this mock-up, these details have been worked through and coordinated in many lengthy design workshops, involving the contractor, structural and electrical engineers, the timber sub-contractor, electricians and us architects. As such, it was even more enjoyable to review the mock-up with all the parties involved and to see our combined efforts bearing fruit.
The carpenters who built the mock-up and the Electrical Engineer, Design Manager, and Architect discussing the installation and accessibility of the LED strips