Architecture – The Cambridge Placebook

July 3, 2023July 10, 2023

Graduating from Cambridge: The Senate House

In April, I officially graduated from the University of Cambridge. High time for a post on where it happened.

The University of Cambridge, like any long-evolving entity, is a labyrinth of vestigial traditions: customs that have shaped the life of the place, but have shrunk over time until only ceremony is left. Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of this than the Senate House. This neoclassical 18^th century building at the heart of the city was for 200 years the meeting place for the University Senate, the then-governing body of the University. Alumni became members of the Senate on receiving their Master of Arts (MA). The MA was already vestigial by the 1700s: a status bequeathed 6 years after matriculating as a BA, rather than a degree as you would normally think of one (more on this later). Cambridge MAs in the Senate could vote on anything from whether to continue requiring Greek exams, to whether to grant women degrees and membership in the University. The latter was voted down twice by the all-male Senate, in 1897 and in 1921, and not granted until 1948, after the Senate had been made vestigial. Now, the only thing of consequence the Senate votes on is the appointment of the University Chancellor.

The 1897 Senate vote on granting women Cambridge degrees (the Nays had it)

February 16, 2023February 16, 2023

Dinky Doors

Some of Cambridge’s most charming architecture is tucked away at ankle level. Since 2019, an anonymous couple has been working toward their mission of “Saving the World” by installing little portals to whimsical delight throughout Cambridge. These are the Dinky Doors. There are 14 so far—new ones pop up every few months—and I always make sure to point out a few of them on tours I give to visitors, or even to friends who have lived here a while and still haven’t noticed them. I must admit that I hadn’t made an effort to track down all of them until I was about to move away (and even then I missed one)!

A tour of all the Dinky Doors is effectively a tour of Cambridge—you can even buy a walking tour from the Dinky Doors website (and/or donate to support their mission to Save the World). There’s also a Youtube channel where the Dinky Doors couple appear (with red boxes on their heads) to update the world on dispatches from the Supreme Leader (a kindly extraterrestrial being giving Dinky Doors instructions on how to Save the World) and otherwise share their quirky humor and Dinky Door backstories. Read on for some highlights!

October 26, 2022February 22, 2023

A Tale of Two Sites: Part I, New Museums Site

Four years after I arrived in Cambridge, I’ve reached a major milestone: I submitted my PhD thesis, and just today, passed the viva (thesis defense, from viva voce, oral exam in the obligatory Latin–and no the exam isn’t in Latin)! I still have more work ahead on publishing the chapters, so I’ll be hanging around a few more months with much the same routine. But given this milestone, I thought it would be good time to resurrect a blog post I started writing in 2019 about the two places where I spent most of my PhD time (that is, outside of pandemic lockdowns).

The day-to-day routine of a PhD student is often fluid, and has only become more so during the pandemic. Before, I went in every day to the office desk I was assigned in the David Attenborough Building (DAB) in the city-centre New Museums Site, or else to the lab in the Plant Sciences Department across the street in the Downing Site. Then, for almost two years, I worked exclusively from my laptop and borrowed second monitor in my bedroom. Over the last few terms, I gradually transitioned back to my old office haunts as my colleagues also repopulated the desks. After only a few visits, once again tromping up and down the six flights of stairs and through the many sets of glass doors emblazoned with frosted swifts up to the familiar DAB tower office with its view of carparks, spires, and sunsets, it felt like I had never left.

August 2, 2022February 22, 2023

The Swifts of the David Attenborough Building

Every summer in early May, bird-minded Brits start looking for the swifts. The birds come screaming up from Africa and southern Europe like arrows, filling the sky with a fantasy of speed. They’re here for just a few months to return to their mates and their nests and breed, the only time of year their little stubby feet will touch down. Their nests are high up—once on cliffs, now more likely in the eaves of buildings—so they can drop easily down into the air on their foraging trips for drifting nest-makings and insects and spiderlings.

For someone from the western U.S., Europe’s common swifts (Apus apus) are a treat. Before, I had only seen one other species of swift, the white-throated, a few times, slicing high around a remote cliff face—nothing like the daily sightings of acrobatic squadrons in the sky above my house in Cambridge. Learning about their yearly sojourns and heroic feats of continuous flying endeared them to me even more. And the David Attenborough Building swift nest boxes clinched the deal.

June 22, 2022June 23, 2022

A Cycle to Ely

Ely: a one-time swamp island, provisioner of freshwater eels, haven for malaria, seat of a Bishop and a cathedral. Between Ely and Cambridge: a river confluence, one or two single-road villages, miles of fen-turned-farmland, a sightline from the Gog Magog hills to the cathedral, a railway line, and a National Cycle Network route. A few months ago a few friends and I with a shared sense of bucket list found a semi-sunny Saturday to do the cycle to Ely. This would be the longest route I’d ever cycled. (Not so for one friend, Amelia, an avid cyclist-explorer who just the weekend before went on a multi-day cycle trip in Wales.)

March 1, 2022March 2, 2022

The Road to Longstanton

I have an elderly friend from church who I’ll call M. We bonded over classical music soon after I moved in, and our friendship was sealed when she invited me to come with her to hear Joshua Bell play in Wigmore Hall, her favorite concert venue in London. After the pandemic had kept me away for some time, she asked me to come visit her. She lives alone in a sunny semi-detached house in Longstanton, one of the many medieval villages orbiting Cambridge. Visiting her would entail a long cycle or a longer bus ride; I didn’t hesitate to choose the cycle route, not least for its tour of the countryside northwest of Cambridge. I’ve visited her several times now, thoroughly enjoying the ride, her company, and the stories gleaned from both.

November 6, 2021January 4, 2022

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is like the cool cousin of London. I wouldn’t be surprised if its popularity as a quick holiday destination has only increased during the pandemic, domestic travel being a hot commodity. I’d only ever heard good things about it but hadn’t managed to get there, despite it being only a 5-hr train ride the length of England from Cambridge. I was determined to squeeze it in before the term got into full swing or any unforeseen disruptions *cough* Covid *cough* got in the way, so my friend Marie and I made a long weekend of the Edinburgh bucket list. Hills, castles, kilts, neogothic grandeur, bagpipes, haggis, hipster art—we fit all of it in.

October 3, 2021January 4, 2022

A Wander along the Thames

London is less than an hour’s express train ride from Cambridge. This has probably given me a bit of a case of “close enough to go anytime so I don’t.” Before the pandemic, I went occasionally to concerts and museums in London, always accompanied by a little wandering. But nothing like proper exploration (let alone top tourist attractions), which I could always do another time. Since the pandemic, repeated national lockdowns and Covid caution have kept me away until the last few months. It’s a shame, because London is like Cambridge on steroids for a place collector like me—nearly infinite nooks and crannies. The clock is ticking and I’m learning not to take London for granted.

The theatre district of the West End of London, comparable to Broadway in New York City, is one place I hadn’t managed to visit. So, recently, when TodayTix alerted me about a sale for West End tickets, I went for it, choosing the musical Come from Away on the next weekend. It also happened to be a weekend I was moving house, but like I said, London is so close you can do an evening or half-day and still get your money’s worth. So, another little wandering glimpse. Without any real plans other than wandering, I took an early afternoon train the day of the play. I had to go to London Liverpool Street Station because the slightly quicker route to Kings Cross Station was disrupted. This was a serendipity, because although it was several miles from the West End, it placed me close enough to the River Thames to do my wandering along the river. I’ve always been drawn to the Thames and its thoroughfares and bridges and waterfront skyline when I visit London—never mind its slight stench. So while the musical and West End were great, my walk along the Thames to get there ended up being an equally vivid highlight.

May 23, 2021July 5, 2021

Suffolk

The focus of this blog is Cambridge, but Cambridge is of course embedded in a larger landscape. We’re in the county of Cambridgeshire, which is part of East Anglia, which is an area within the East of England, an official region of England, which is part of Great Britain, which is part of the United Kingdom (which is no longer part of the European Union). Learning these nested names reminds me of being a kid in the United States before I had a solid sense of what was higher in the geographical hierarchy, a state or a country. East Anglia is more of a historical geography than an administrative one. It’s the easternmost knob of England sticking out into the North Sea, including the counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and is known for its flatness. Let me take you across the flat fenland to the big open spaces of Suffolk, all the way to the seaside.

April 11, 2021December 12, 2021

Madingley and Coton: A Country Ramble

So much of Britain is countryside. It still boggles my mind that after millennia of habitation, such a relatively small place could be mostly rural, with a few major urban centers and the rest a network of tiny villages in a sea of fields. Cambridge is balanced rather precariously on the boundary between these worlds. You don’t have to go far in any direction to plunge straight into rural green. It’s also growing fast, destabilizing the long history of tight containment within that green matrix, and unsurprisingly stirring up anxiety among countryside lovers and dwellers. I’m only an observer—but I do number myself among the countryside lovers.