A low carbon 100 place timber bike shed with bin store to complement Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership's Entopia building
To meet Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership's 🡢 ethos the building touches the ground as lightly as possible and minimises embodied carbon. Tectonically this meant no removal of earth from site, no concrete foundations and a light weight, strong and durable natural material like timber. Historically horses were stabled in this part of Cambridge. Apt then that the programme, imagery and material for the new bike shed echoes and revives this tradition of accommodating individual transport in this part of the city.
The bike shed is a series of ‘floating’ douglas fir pavilions, anchored to a raft of oak foundation sleepers pre-fabricated and installed by award winning construction carpentry specialist Emanuel Hendry 🡢 Vertical ‘hit-and-miss’ slats resembling Yorkshire boarding traditionally used as cladding for agricultural buildings, is here used to provide a secure enclosure for the bicycles. This means of construction and organisation also generates form that is beautiful: a play of solid and void, light and shade, geometry and topography.
“A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture"
This functional building challenges Nikolaus Pevsner’s assertion with sound sustainable credentials and unusual aesthetic appeal.
