St Andrew’s Church

St Andrew’s Church in Chesterton received the land out of a section 106 agreement. With the help of Lottery funding, they were able to build this community hall, designed by Marilize while working for Freeland Rees Roberts. Our brief was to design a multifunctional community hall that was flexible and could serve the whole community in as many as possible different functions possible.Run and administered by St Andrews Church, we were able to create a community hall with 3 parking spaces on the site and plenty of bicycle parking spaces.
After arriving at the site, you are drawn to the covered entrance by a soft curved pavement. From here you enter into the entrance Foyer that organizes the circulation. To the right hand side is a double office; straight ahead is the staircase and a lift to the top floor and to the left is the main hall area.
The first floor accommodates 3 well- proportioned classrooms and a meeting room, a kitchenette and a wc. We incorporated a corridor above the double volume hall area, with windows, from where procedures in the hall area could be watched.
Turning left in the ground floor foyer, you will find the hall through glazed double doors. The hall was well designed with a Junkers timber sprung floor, to accommodate and comply with the high specification of dancing classes. At the back of the building, a small enclosed courtyard garden, leads through a very old wall, and the graves of The St Andrews Church ground, back to the church itself.

Location: Chesterton, Cambridge
Budget: £500 000
Engineer: Andrew Firebrace Partnership
Quantity Surveyor: Sheriff Tiplady
Services Engineer: Roger Parker associates
Status: Completed 2005