Allies and Morrison’s Passivhaus student village for St John’s College, Cambridge, offers a quietly persuasive model for academic institutions grappling with the demands of net zero, student
wellbeing, and urban integration. Hinsley Lane, accommodates 245 undergraduates and postgraduates across 39 shared townhouses. Commissioned by St John’s College, Cambridge, and
the scheme offers a thoughtful alternative to the more standardised ‘pile-em high’ model that dominates the UK student housing sector. A series of red-brick terraces set within a
sequence of shared gardens, it recalls the scale and sociability of a traditional college setting, and yet it sits quietly within a leafy, low-density suburb on the city’s inner western edge.
There will be a tour of Hinsley Lane on 8th July at 2pm. The meeting point is the Porter’s Lodge at the centre of the site. Matthew Traub, the lead architect at Allies and Morrison will attend to talk through the design aspects.
