School of Pythagoras wins Cambridge Design Award

The School of Pythagoras has won an award for best conservation of a building at this year’s Cambridge Design and Construction Awards. 

The 13th century School of Pythagoras has won an award for architectural excellence at this year’s Cambridge Design and Construction Awards.

The building, which predates St John’s College by some 300 years and is the oldest secular building in Cambridge, underwent extensive refurbishment and redevelopment to become the new home of the College Archives. It now stores documents and items from the 504 year history of St John’s, including the Foundation Charter from 1511 itself.

The curious name has been applied to the building for at least 400 years, though the reasons for it are unclear.

The redevelopment of the School included creating secure and climate-controlled storage for the many fragile and priceless items in the Archives, as well as a reading room for visiting researchers and an exhibition space to display historic material for public and school open days.

The Cambridge Design and Construction Awards have run for three years and are co-sponsored by the Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry, the Cambridge News and Cambridge City Council. They have three categories, including “best conservation, alteration or extension of an existing building”, which was won by the School of Pythagoras.

This marks the second year running that St John’s College has won the award, with the Divinity School picking up the prize in 2014.

Kevin Blencowe, of Cambridge City Council, said:

“Many of the developments happening now in Cambridge are of a high standard of design, reflected in the submissions for this year’s awards. We received a wide variety of entries this year, from very sensitive alterations and re-use of existing heritage buildings to major new housing developments. The overall quality of entries was very high”.