First Students Move into Gresham House at Hughes Hall
rhp’s success in a design competition run by Hughes Hall in 2013 led to our appointment by the Cambridge College to design new graduate accommodation for their students. The resultant building, Gresham House is now complete and the first students have been moving in this week. Located on the opposite edge of Fenner’s Cricket Ground from the main College site, the scheme also offered the potential to improve the College presence within the City. The building’s form, aspect and materials were selected in careful response to the surrounding context. The 85 student rooms with ancillary spaces are arranged into apartments of 6-10 bedrooms, each with its own shared kitchen/dining room where students can socialise.
We have arranged the accommodation around a central garden court, which not only creates landscape views for the students, but also opens up more public views from the street to the Cricket grounds and existing College buildings beyond. The scheme additionally provides a separate changing facility for the adjacent University Indoor Cricket School.
Work on the project commenced in 2015 and the new building has been handed over to the College in time for the new academic year.