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.
CRAFTLINES
AUGUST 2015
My grandfather has worn many hats; soldier, civil servant, father of seven, husband, and winner of a county final in hurling (the achievement of which he is potentially most proud). He is fluent in Irish and recalls event and dates from 50 years ago with a staggering accuracy. Yet the residing image of him from my childhood is as a craftsman – in the garage next to his house in Dublin, whittling and sanding a piece of ash to form a hurley, sizing it precisely for the user, wrapping the handle to create the perfect hold. I remember sitting, playing surreptitiously with a clamp, watching this in awe: the creation of the perfect instrument from a piece of timber; a skill honed through practice and an unfailing attention to detail. I marvelled at the assurance of it all, the promise in his hands.
It would be satisfyingly simple to attribute my choice of career to these moments – to claim there was an epiphany in watching him, a sudden realisation that I wanted to be an architect, to create. In reality, however, the path was not so linear; instead the conviction that I wanted to become an architect embedded itself in my consciousness slowly, over time. The memory of him working in his garage was one I didn’t return to often, and like any story we fail to repeatedly tell ourselves, it languished, dormant, in the recesses of my mind.
I recently went to site at Jesus College, Cambridge, where we are working on a project that is part new build, part refurbishment. An aspect of the refurbishment involves the adaptation of eight bookcases in the magnificent former library into wall panelling. The existing bookcases are a dark stained timber, designed by Maurice Webb in the 1920s and wonderfully crafted by a masterful hand. Reworking these without compromising their beauty would be a challenge for any craftsman.
On seeing the work the joiner had done, I realised there was no cause for worry – it had been executed with confident, competent hands. In that moment, the memory of my grandfather in his garage came back to me in glorious Technicolor; and I felt a familiar thrill at the embodied potential of the right material in the hands of a craftsman, with promise in his hands.