The practice won a limited competition for the new £6m buildings for Clare College in Cambridge. The site is a highly sensitive one next to Memorial Court – a series of humane landscaped courtyards designed for the College by Giles Gilbert-Scott and built in stages between 1929 and 1950. The new Lerner Court provides a Conference Centre (the Gillespie Centre), with Lecture Theatre and break-out rooms together with 38 study bedrooms, college offices, and laundry. The building was organised in two wings around a new courtyard, completing Gilbert-Scott’s original masterplan of 1929. The buildings are respectful of the existing buildings, which are highly regarded, but are expressed as contemporary interventions into the urban grain. High quality, robust brick has been used at low level to take the knocks of everyday life, the type of brick here relating to but not copying the historic buildings opposite. Above ground level and out of harms way, timber cladding that relates to the neighbouring woods has been used on the residential wing, whereas copper, evoking a more civic presence has been used on the conference centre which relates to the external world. Contract value: £8.5m