£8m Cambridge University dining hall wins planning
London-based practice's £8.2 million dining hall for Homerton College, Cambridge, has won planning permission
The 1,750m² project next to the Grade II-listed Arts and Crafts Ibberson Building includes a new dining hall, kitchens and associated staff facilities for the university's largest college.
Feilden Fowles won a 2017 competition for the project, beating 154 rival bids. Since the competition win, the scheme has increased in size resulting in an uplift in the project value from the original cost of £7 million to £8.2 million.
The new dining hall, described by Feilden Fowles as an 'Arts and Crafts building for the 21st century', has been commissioned to mark the college's 250th anniversary.
The new 330-seater hall will be used for both ceremonial events and daily gatherings, with its current Great Hall reserved for performances, lectures and smaller dinners.
The building features a distinctive valley-shaped roof and includes an informal gathering space – the buttery – that forms an anteroom to the dining hall.
Edmund Fowles and Eleanor Hedley of Feilden Fowles said: "The new dining hall celebrates the integrity and inherent beauty of materials and the craftsmanship of construction, alluding to the social and design principles of the Arts and Crafts movement, as reflected in the handsome Ibberson Building.
We are very excited to be progressing what we hope will be a transformative building for Homerton College, an Arts and Crafts building for the 21st century."