WONG AVERY MUSIC GALLERY, Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.

ROLE: Project Architect.

PROJECT: Mixed-use. New Development.

EXPERTISE: Masonry and Internal & External Cladding; Technical Design; 2D & 3D Software.

Design and installation of natural stone masonry walls. Design and installation of cladding in a new building located in a historical and listed environment.

STAGES: Project coordination, technical design and construction (UK RIBA stages 4 & 5).

AWARDS: Commended building in the Natural Stone Awards 2022. Category: Interiors.

DESCRIPTION: At Harrison Goldman Studio, I had the opportunity of being part of a team that involved Brown & Ralf Ltd (Stone Specialist), Niall McLaughlin Architects and Barnes Construction; to build a new performance and musical practice space for Trinity Hall College, Cambridge. This was an exciting opportunity for all involved parts, as the new building is located in a central Court and is surrounded by opulent stone architecture and several remarkable listed buildings.

The use of stone as the main construction material in this project has allow the new building to intimately integrate its modern design of cubic forms with the already existing classical environment of the other college buildings, which include the listed Clare College Chapel, that encloses the Avery Court to the south.

GROUND FLOOR-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

We faced the technical challenges of a stone load bearing construction made of thin stone columns to allow the entrance of natural light. We have participated in the constructive design of the stone load bearing columns and its relationship with the walls.

LANTERN – TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION.

Visually, the cubic lantern distributes a continuous sequence of thin stone columns with glazed windows in each column bay. Although at first sight, you get the impression that these thin lantern columns are load bearing columns but you will be astonished to realize that the lantern columns rest … on air!

Finding an appropriate technical solution to bear the load of the internal lantern stones was a real challenge. We proposed and designed a complex load bearing solution, which was able to accommodate both vertical and horizontal lantern stones, (thus the look of floating on air) but the design continues to be challenging because the bottom surface of each column is visible, which meant we could not load the stone from the base, so we designed a clever loading system, where each stone column rest on a T shape profile. The T shape profiles are accommodating and are resin filled inside a notch in the back face of the bottom stone of each column. Being this face the only non-visible face of the stone.