Turing Locke Hotel, Eddington, Cambridge

Landscape design for new hotel: courtyard garden, terraces, public realm

Turing Locke forms part of the exciting new Eddington development, a 150-hectare sustainable district developed by the University of Cambridge, providing accommodation for staff and students, learning facilities, and green spaces.

This innovative hotel complex is arranged around a beautiful central courtyard garden that is an unexpected oasis containing lush woodland planting, open lawns, dining terraces, and entertainment spaces for visitors and residents to meet and relax.

We worked with Stirling Prize-winning architects DRMM on the 180-unit Turing Locke and the 150-room Hyatt Centric to create a multifunctional civic landscape visually connecting the street and catering for important routes through the wider development. The project has been developed with a high level of energy efficiency in mind and a target BREEAM Excellent rating.

Created in close consultation with the Cambridgeshire Quality Panel and Greater Cambridge Planning Service, the landscape spaces in the central courtyard improve biodiversity and contribute to the sustainable drainage strategy.

From the hotel entrance, a meandering path leads via several seating niches to a more open terrace space with views out to the south across the courtyard, where a canopy of flowering trees provides shelter, privacy, and a green outlook from the rooms. The landscape extends beneath the building through the undercroft spaces linking to the street, where planters are filled with an exuberant mixture of sun-loving low shrubs, perennials and herbs.

“Winner of Best New Landscape, Greater Cambridge Design & Construction Awards 2024″

The design incorporates a series of seasonal rooftop terraces and green roofs that enjoy sunny and wide views out to the south. It is gently subdivided with raised planters containing a mixture of colourful aromatic, flowering shrubs and herbs to enhance the site’s biodiversity, provide an important habitat and food source for wildlife, and assist with rainwater attenuation and cooling of the building.

A substantial podium garden on the first-floor roof to the north of the courtyard is a private communal terrace for residents and provides individual terraces for each bedroom, forming small, decked spaces ‘carved’ out of the surrounding planting with a mixture of evergreen shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants. A cloister walk ramps up to a slightly elevated level in the northeastern corner, where a stone paved terrace forms a spill-out space for the café overlooking the garden.

“This is an ambitious and innovative project which has placed a garden and generous planting scheme at the heart of the hotel’s operation. Moreover the whole area is welcoming and open to the public, providing an important new area of attractive public space for Eddington.”

Stephen Kelly, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service

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