The existing site was densely planned, with a highly varied scale, character and quality of built fabric that reflected its historic evolution from industrial and residential to University uses. Most of the buildings were occupied by administrative and academic functions, which the University had begun to relocate as part of a wider strategy to improve facilities and optimise development on their estate.

This provided a unique opportunity for Pembroke to expand its campus directly opposite the historic College, re-shaping a congested urban site to provide new social, teaching, and living accommodation as well as public and cultural spaces. This has transformed a series of under-used and poorly connected existing buildings of varying age and architectural character into a cohesive collegiate environment, with an outward looking relationship to the wider city. The new and existing buildings are arranged around a series of laterally connected open spaces that continue and extend the language of Pembroke’s distinctive gardens.

The first phase of the development focused on the eastern half of the site, in which several historically significant buildings have been restored and reconfigured around a new courtyard garden to provide fully accessible teaching, social and administrative spaces. Most notably, a listed former Church has been comprehensively refurbished and retrofitted to provide a new flexible auditorium for collegiate, University and community use.

Connecting these historic buildings are a series of publicly accessible new-build interventions, including a new Gatehouse; a Foyer building; and the reconstructed School House of the former Church. The new linked buildings are spatially distinct but share a common language of expressed timber framing in European oak glulam, with CLT decks, and solid oak linings and joinery.

The second phase included the creation of a new College Court, providing 96 new ensuite student rooms and Fellows’ sets arranged around a new garden. The three-sided Dolby Court, which also addresses an existing building at the heart of the site, is formed of both new and existing structures, including part of a former industrial building that has been deep retrofitted and reconfigured to provide student accommodation and shared gym facilities.

Integrated into the new residential buildings is a new energy centre with air source heat pumps providing gas-free heating as well as cooling to the entire site. This makes the project one of the largest de-gasification schemes within the city centre, and the most significant element of a long-term drive to decarbonise the College estate.

The new and existing buildings are connected by new biodiverse gardens, which are rainwater and borehole irrigated and incorporate extensive flood mitigation measures to provide long-term climate resilience within an area of acute water stress.

The diversity of the internal and external spaces provides a series of versatile, adaptive, and flexible environments that will support a range of activities for generations to come, reinforcing Pembroke’s commitment to world-class research, teaching, and the exchange of ideas.