Low density (35–90dph) Built on the former Clay Farm, south Cambridge, Abode is a

key part of a major housing and mixed-use development. The

Abode at Great Kneighton phase 1 design consists of a hierarchy of spaces and housing types to
suit the transition from urban to rural edge. It gives form to the
existing infrastructure and a sense of arrival at the entrance
to the neighbourhood, before moving sequentially towards a
more relaxed morphology addressing the countryside.

Proctor and Matthews Architects, who have worked with

3 Countryside Properties since Greenwich Millennium Village,
were appointed to design the first phase of 308 homes at an
average density of 48dph with 1.5 off-street parking spaces
per dwelling. Faced with an existing urban-scale road structure
and roundabout, their first task was to resolve the dilemma
posed by the contrasting scale of this and the deliberately
low-density, suburban nature of the larger part of the site.

The solution displays considerable ingenuity. At the urban

edge, a combination of two-storey ‘houses’ with a single
storey of flats above and a formal rear parking court forms
a perfectly rectangular walled courtyard, the size of Trinity
ROYAL WAY

College Great Court. Two freestanding five-storey pavilions act

HOBSON ROAD

as markers on the axis of two of the approach roads, helping to

minimise the impact of the roundabout.
SHOWGROUND ROAD

HOBSON AVENUE

ADDENBROOKE'S ROAD

From various exercises, reaching back to 1960s New Town

ADDENBROO

planning, architects have toyed with the idea of a ‘linear city’,

SHELFO

with vehicular axis in one direction and pedestrian/walkable

KE'S ROAD
RD RO

routes at right angles. Here, the same principle is used in

AD

plan and section. While the vehicular axis gets you from A
to B, two double-height archways in the courtyard wall lead
to a series of narrow paths at right angles, winding between
the houses. These are described by the architects as ‘green
lanes’, allowing movement away from the central court with
N

the density reducing progressively through a series of short

Location Cambridge terraces, then to pairs of semi-detached houses, freestanding
Architect P
 roctor and Matthews Architects family houses, publicly accessible open space and, ultimately,
Landscape architect 
BBUK Studio Limited and the country park.
Townshend Landscape Architects
Client  C ountryside Properties As the density reduces across the development, each house or
Site size  6.44ha pair of houses is sited with its long elevation to the street. This,
No. of dwellings 308 combined with a much shorter back-to-back distance than
Density 48dph usual, enables the architect to present the wide frontage on to
Dwelling mix 3 x studio, 24 x 1-bed, 127 x 2-bed, the ‘green lane’ in front of the house. A further transition takes
97 x 3-bed, 51 x 4-bed, 6 x 5-bed
place at the rear of the site, where black timbered dwellings
Tenure mix 60% private, 40% affordable
(a reference to local agricultural typologies) establish loose
Other uses N/A
clusters of smaller two- and three-storey homes.
Parking spaces 1.5
per home
The architecture of the urban terraces is rectilinear, with
richly textured and patterned brickwork, and monopitch roofs
sloping away from a high front parapet. The houses beyond
move into an altogether different vocabulary. These range
from two-storey, wide-frontage, flat-roofed terrace houses
1 Black timbered detached houses on the northern
periphery of the site reference local agricultural
with integral garages to semi-detached and detached houses
buildings clad in black-stained weatherboarding with steeply pitched
2 Short terraces of four-bedroom houses integrate
parking and upper private terraces within a shallow,
plain tile roofs. The overall result is an attractive, coherent and
wide frontage well-integrated neighbourhood.

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