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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
In 1974, Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein, of the leading Glasgow practice of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia (GKC), were announced as the winners of the competition to design the new Robinson College, Cambridge, which had been endowed by the businessman David Robinson. The first (and principal) phase of their design was completed in 1981. Robinson remains the most recently created college in Cambridge, which had seen a flurry of new foundations since the mid-1950s, including Churchill College, Clare Hall, Darwin College, Fitzwilliam College, New Hall, and Wolfson (originally University) College. In addition, Robinson was the last major project by its architects, who had assumed the creative lead at GKC in the early 1950s and were subsequently responsible for a series of significant religious and institutional buildings in both Scotland and England. The firm was wound up in 1987, a move that has been described as ‘a tragedy for Glasgow and for Scottish architecture’.
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14 The trustees of the new Foundation were Professor J. W. Linnett (Master of Sydney Sussex, and, at the time, Vice Chancellor), J. R. Bambrough (St John’s), Professor C. O. Brink (Gonville and Caius), Professor W. O. Chadwick (Master of Selwyn), T. C. Gardner (University Treasurer), J. Horwood Smart, Miss A. R. (later Dame Rosemary) Murray (President of New Hall), Dr N. J. T. M. Needham (then Master of Gonville and Caius), Mr F. W. W. (later Sir Francis) Pemberton and Lord Todd (then Master of Christ’s). Needham excused himself from the architectural side in a letter dated 6 November 1974, saying, ‘I have no particular views on the planning of Robinson College, and no special interest in modern Western architecture, so I should be of almost no use to the other Trustees’ (Cambridge, Robinson College Archives, Linnett Papers 2.5).
15 Pooley had been County Architect for Buckinghamshire since 1954. See The Times, 8 May 1973, p. 4.
16 J. M. Richards, ‘Howell, William Gough (1922–1974)’, rev. Catherine Gordon, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31256 (accessed on 10 April 2012).
17 Author’s interview with Andy MacMillan, 18 February 2012.
18 Glasgow, Glasgow School of Art Archives (hereafter ‘GSA’), GKC/COCAM/1/2, letter to Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, 23 May 1974.
19 Ibid.
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49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.4, note by Linnett on Powell and Moya’s initial proposal.
52 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.1, Leslie Martin’s initial proposal.
53 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.6, Casson Condor and Partner’s initial proposal.
54 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.6, note by Linnett.
55 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.9, Eric Lyons, Cunningham and Partner’s initial proposal, with note by Linnett.
56 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.2, Terry Farrell/Nicholas Grimshaw’s initial proposal.
57 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.7, MacCormac Jamieson Architect’s initial proposal.
58 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4.8, HT Cadbury-Brown initial proposal.
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61 RCA, Linnett Papers, 2.4, informal voting slips by Horwood Smart, Linnet, Brink, Todd and two anonymous.
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66 Refers to the Botanist David Smith (later Sir), later Vice Chancellor at Edinburgh and President of Wolfson College, Oxford.
67 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.4, telephone transcript from the evening of 14 July 1974.
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77 Ibid.
78 Willis, Robert and Clark, John Willis, The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1988), III, p. 267 Google Scholar. My thanks to Alistair Fair for pointing me towards this.
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85 RCA, Linnett Papers 2.5, letter from Swanage Brick & Tile Company, 5 April 1976.
86 GSA, GKC / COCAM /1 / 9, letter of 14 May 1976.
87 See, for example, GSA, GKC/COCAM/1/19, minutes of meeting, 7 July 1977.
88 GSA, GKC / COCAM /1 /19, minutes of meeting with the architects at Robinson College, 24 June 1977.
89 Daily Telegraph, 1 August 1980.
90 Author’s interview with Isi Metzstein, 18 January 2011.
91 Interview with Metzstein, 18 January 2011. A version of this story also appears in Spalding, Frances, John Piper Myfanwy Piper, Lives in Art (London, 2009), p. 454 Google Scholar. However, Andy MacMillan reports that the anecdote is an exaggeration (author’s interview with Andy MacMillan, 18 February 2012).
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114 Ibid.
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117 Pevsner, Nikolaus, Visual Planning and the Picturesque (Los Angeles, 2010), p. 51 Google Scholar. Originally written in 1949.
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121 Oxford, Wadham College Archives, 82/B/61, New Library Proposal, 1973.
122 Oxford, Wadham College Archives, 82/11/1, Development Plan, 1966.
123 Ibid.
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid.
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128 Ibid.
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130 Cambridge, Downing College Archives, DCAR/1/2/4/1/47, report of an informal meeting of the Governing Body, 10 January 1966. An account of the Downing project, drawing in detail on the archives, will be published by the present author in the journal of the Twentieth Century Society in 2013.
131 Cambridge, Downing College Archives, DGCB/M/1/12, Governing Body Minutes, 27 November 1964, p. 334.
132 Cambridge, Downing College Archives, report on an informal meeting of the Governing Body, 10 January 1966.
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