Cambridge: The new Kitchens and Servery at Jesus College, completed 2022.
Photographer: David Valinsky
After ten years of discussion, briefing, design, the securing of statutory consents, and construction, this complex reconfiguration has been successfully completed. All the existing buildings involved were listed at Grade 1; most of them had hardly changed for five hundred years. An enormous amount of detailed design work, discussion with the end users, problem solving on site, and many excellent and committed sub-contractors have ensured that the final result is fully ‘fit for purpose’. It also meets the original core aims of expanding the size of the kitchens significantly, of adding environmental control where there was none, and of introducing full wheelchair access to all parts of the building. Plus, its sustainability credentials lead the way amongst Cambridge colleges, providing all the heating and hot water from an extensive and deep array of ground source heat pumps beneath the adjacent cricket pitch. And finally, the new buildings blend comfortably with their older neighbours, without pastiche and remaining evidently buildings of the twenty-first century.