Modernist Cambridge from the River
Cambridge afternoon, punt tour and drinks
Saturday 26 July 2025
Start time/place: 3pm/Robinson College, Porters’ Lodge
Finish time/place: 8pm/St John’s College, Cripps Building
The day will kick off with a tour of the red-brick Robinson College (Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, 1981), featuring stained glass in the chapel by John Piper, guided by architectural historian Dr Otto Saumarez Smith.
Onwards through the nearby Sidgwick Site, Cambridge’s modernist campus for the humanities and social sciences, devised to post-war Townscape principles. Here, compare Casson & Conder’s historically allusive Raised Faculty Building (1968) with James Stirling’s avant-garde History Faculty (1968), which is currently undergoing refurbishment in dialogue with the Twentieth Century Society.
Next, a stop at the brutalist Graduate Centre (Howell, Killick, Partridge & Amis, 1967) before boarding punts steered by Historic England’s Luke Jacob. From the River Cam, spot Queens’ College’s first leap into modernism with the Erasmus Building (Basil Spence, 1960) and later the larger Cripps Building (Powell & Moya, 1980). Further along, at Magdalene, is the Lutyens Building (1932) and David Wyn Roberts’ conservation-minded remodelling of Benson Court from the 1950s, preserving the old and injecting the new.
Finally, a tour of the Cripps Building at St John’s College (Powell & Moya, 1967) – described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a masterpiece’ – by resident fellow Dr Holly Smith. The day ends with a drinks reception in one of the Cripps Fellows’ Sets, with splendid views out onto the River Cam.
Dr Otto Saumarez Smith is an architectural and urban historian. He is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick.
Dr Holly Smith is a historian of architecture and protest. She is a Research Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge.
Luke Jacob is a Listing Adviser at Historic England and a PhD candidate at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge.
C20 Members only £35
(Includes a glass of wine at the end of the event as well as contribution to the casework and campaigning activities of the society)
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The Twentieth Century Society is an IHBC (Institute of Historic Building conservation) recognised CPD provider.
Twentieth Century Society is a registered charity, no 1110244
Above: Cripps Building as seen on the cover of C20 Journal 11 – Oxford and Cambridge . Photo by James O Davies, copyright Historic England.