The Cambridge Room
The website of the Cambridge Room has gone live: www.cambridgeroom.org. The public is welcomed to subscribe to the mailing list for news and updates.
The Cambridge Room is being set up as a Charity in collaboration with the Cambridge Association of Architects. The Room will open in 2024. In January 2024, the winner of the Cambridge Room logo and ideas contest has been announced as Victoria Fabron, Eric Martin, Pawel Pietkun and Luciano Ingenito from the Cambridge studio of Allies and Morrison.
Cambridge Room Charter
1. AIM
The aim of the Cambridge Room is to raise the quality of the built environment for the benefit of all through collective action. It will support the development of pragmatic, cutting edge research in this area and will play an active role in the development of the UK based Urban Rooms Network. It will explore subjects relevant to the built and natural environment locally yet informed by global studies and ideas.
2. LOCAL SCOPE
The focus of the Cambridge Room is local, on the City of Cambridge but it will encompass temporary pop up engagement spaces across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined authority to allow for sharing of knowledge across rural and urban areas.
3. APPROACH
The Cambridge Room will take a big picture approach to built and natural environment issues across the area, fostering debate, helping communities and others make sense of and bring order to the many types of initiatives that are on the go.
4. INDEPENDENT
The Cambridge Room will be an independent, neutral and trustworthy one stop shop for members of the public who want to understand what is happening in the local environment, who want to influence decision making and planning, and want to see their input translated into action. The charities and the public sector which support us will not influence our impartiality. We will deliver inclusive engagement services for a variety of organisations based on our core values.
5. PARTICIPATION
A central aim of the Cambridge Room is to widen participation in planning consultation. It will be an inclusive and accessible physical and digital space where communities, universities, schools, local authorities, businesses, industry and practice can come together to share knowledge on an equal basis.
6. INCLUSION
Although its focus is the built environment the Cambridge Room will support the development of inclusive governance and transparent decision making across the region.
7. ETHICAL BEST PRACTICE
The Cambridge Room will support the development of ethical best practice in planning consultation, the promotion of inclusion standards, feedback loops and accessible, well designed, reliable information.
8. CREATIVITY
The Cambridge Room will promote creativity and action in the built and natural environments by initiating events, workshops, knowledge exchange and talks. It will support co-creation in the planning, design, construction and use from the earliest idea stage through to occupation.
9. MEMORY
The Cambridge Room will act as a ‘collective memory’ for a city with a large transient population. It will work to ensure that consultations feed into one another and that valuable community knowledge is not lost.
10. KNOWLEDGE SHARING
The Cambridge Room will offer opportunities for community science and knowledge exchange. It will support the development of an inclusive network of community members who will play a key role in collecting data on buildings and places before, during and after construction.