
Histon Road, Cambridge
This housing development on Histon Road, Cambridge, was designed with people and community at the forefront. Taking inspiration from traditional mews styles, these homes have an open feel, viewing the street as a shared public space. The variety of home types and sizes hopes to encourage a diverse range of residents, which will eventually form a thriving neighbourhood.
This was an unused brownfield site with an odd collection of buildings including an old laundry business, some derelict squash courts, and an old house with various accretions of sheds and outbuildings. A public footpath runs through the site along the southern boundary connecting the NIAB fields to the site entrance at Histon Road.
Most modern housing developments are designed with houses to have rear private gardens, and with the front roads given over to car parking provision, and roads designed for excess parking and to take refuse vehicles with their required turning circles and hammerheads. This priority given to vehicles encourages faster traffic, which in turn creates the need for footways for pedestrians and sometimes separate cycle routes. This can often generate an expanse of tarmac over ten metres in width, with limited opportunities for on-street green spaces. These hostile public spaces create inward-looking homes which close themselves to the street and turn their focus to the private rear gardens. There is little opportunity for “active frontages” or “eyes on the street”, as championed by the activist and urbanist Jane Jacobs.
Some of the most sought after properties in London are the terraced houses and mews developments, built before the advent of cars. These compact, densely developed spaces are mostly highly desirable and successful neighbourhoods, with a strong sense of community and the street serving as a vibrant shared public place.
This Cambridge development of 18 houses and nine flats borrows from these urban typologies. The houses on the lane facing the public footpath are south facing single aspect, with their gardens between the house frontage and the lane, and car parking in the front garden.
The second street borrows the language of a mews with the paved street shared amongst cars, pedestrians and cyclists. The houses on the north side are arranged with their roofs perpendicular to the street, forming a row of gables stepping back from the frontage. These set-backs form a space for cars, shielded to the sides of the houses. The street elevations of these homes are made up of large bay windows with a surprisingly open aspect onto the public space of the mews. The houses on the south side are typical mews homes: garages doors face directly onto the street and narrow strips of planting separate the frontage from the street to encourage vertical trellises, creepers and accretions of pot plants and foliage.
The buildings accommodate a wide demographic, including a small apartment building of nine flats, two large detached houses, and 17 semis and terraces of various sizes. The shared public areas include two green spaces, one which will include a children’s play area. This will hopefully become a close community, with a strong sense of identity and neighbourliness.
Photos by Richard Fraser
