Ridge provides project management services on the interior renovation of the 300-year-old Gibbs Building.
Standing beside King’s College Chapel, the Gibbs Building has been part of Cambridge’s history for over 300 years. Its stonework has been recently cleaned, and from the outside, the building is impressive; exactly the sort of building that would be on the cover of a university prospectus. But the interior? The interior tells the tale of 300 years of patchwork adaptations, Fellows carving out study spaces and working around the quirks previous generations had left behind – layers upon layers of practical compromises.
This is where Ridge and the project team come in.
Refurbishing the Gibbs Building: a grade I listed challenge
We were appointed in the summer of 2025 to project manage what might be one of the most delicate balancing acts in higher education renovation: a full internal refurbishment of a Grade I listed building that’s been used for decades. The challenge? Pretty much everything – and we’re looking forward to getting started.
The Gibbs Building is not a museum piece hosting tour groups; it’s a working academic building where Fellows conduct research, teach students and supervise the next generation of scholars. They have been doing this for the past three centuries and will continue to while we carefully unpick decades of modifications and bring the building into the 21st century.
Each office, each teaching space, each room in the building has been curated by an individual story. Fellows aren’t interchangeable, and neither are their spaces. Each room will require its own approach; this is not a copy-and-paste job.
Decarbonisation and accessibility: more than a facelift
The brief goes far beyond aesthetic improvements. We are tackling decarbonisation – turning a building designed in an era of open fires and candles into a carbon-conscious building fit for the future. We are looking at improving accessibility whilst respecting the building’s historic fabric, all whilst the building remains operational.
Then there’s the location. When your building is one of the most photographed pieces of architecture in Britain, you don’t get to close roads, stack materials where convenient or make noise whenever suits the programme. The physical constraints are matched only by the operational ones.
Why this matters
Projects like the Gibbs building don’t come along often, and when they do, they demand a particular approach. What excites us about this project is the complexity. It’s about respecting history while building for the future, working around people, not displacing them, the College that depends on it, the city that treasures it, and the countless visitors who come to Cambridge precisely because places like this exist.
The Gibbs Building has stood for 300 years. Our job is to find out what will keep it thriving for the next 300.
For more information, contact Keir Dixon.
Image credit: Martin Bond on behalf of King’s College, Cambridge.
