RIBA EAST AWARD WINNER
MAY 2022
Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."
PLANNING PERMISSION GRANTED FOR WONG AVERY GALLERY
MAY 2018
Planning permission has been granted for the construction of a small new music practice and performance space for Trinity Hall, Cambridge. The stone-built music practice and recital space will sit in the centre of Avery Court, on the College’s central Cambridge site, adjacent to several listed buildings including the chapels of both Trinity Hall and Clare College. It will be named the Wong Avery Gallery in recognition of its primary funders, the family of the late Dennis Avery, the College Fellow after whom the Court is named. The addition of the new building will greatly improve the College’s offer for students and staff participating in or studying music and enrich the cultural life of the College as a whole.
It is a simple loadbearing construction made of thin stone columns and beams. It is a composition of cubic forms, with a Greek cross plan-form. Performances will take place in the centre, with audience seating in bay windows at the ends of each arm, the walls of which are lined with shelves to store sheet music. Over the crossing, a glazed lantern brings light into the centre of the building and is lined with acoustic shutters which allow the reverbera- tion time of the space to be finely tuned according to the number of musicians and audience members for each rehearsal or performance. As part of the proposals, the court will be landscaped to designs by Kim Wilkie, with a large paved area surrounded by borders filled with predominantly green shrubs and climbing plants.
The project is due to start on site during the academic year 2018 -19.