John certainly helped us achieve it. Since the building has been completed, it has become one of the favourite locations for students
Patrick Hanlon
The site, on the outskirts of Cambridge, is located next to a major trunk road, adjacent to agricultural land and also an established residential area. John’s brief was to provide a masterplan which provided the optimum number of residential units. He applied his own brief to consider the provision of a place where people would want to live.
The design starts with the landscape, and works inwards from the green edges, via new pedestrian, cycle and vehicle routes, to three new green squares, all linked by a sustainable urban drainage system.
The architecture, conceived as a series of pavilions and terraces wrapped around the green squares, seeks to address the mundane prerequisites of modern housing, namely increased parking and refuse collection and storage, in an innovative manner to free up the streets for use as an extension of the residents homes, whilst also ensuring good views, aspect and space provision are provided.
“We were keen to understand the full housing potential for the Flagship site at Glebe Farm, the first development in the Cambridge Southern Fringe and asked John McCart to produce a master plan. His strap line, to ‘produce a place where people would want to live’ was complemented by the production of a master plan that we could see would prove to be as economically viable as it was attractive both to the potential purchaser and to the local authority who required the very best quality design solution.”
– Mette McLarney, Group Chief Architect, Countryside Properties
