The Icon is a 106-apartment residential development within the University of Cambridge’s Eddington masterplan, defining the edge of the local centre and addressing Storey’s Field cricket pitch. Two stepped terraces enclose a central Long Gallery, creating a compact courtyard building that completes surrounding streets, squares and green spaces. The project combines a clear urban role with a layered sequence of shared and private realms.

The brief was highly prescribed, requiring private for-sale homes, parking and an independent gallery within strict parameter plans and Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5. A diverse mix of apartments, duplexes and penthouses is organised around eight cores to maximise dual-aspect living, supported by secure underground parking, cycle storage and integrated servicing.

At its heart, the Long Gallery is both circulation and destination: an open-air shared route that all homes address, conceived as a social spine rather than a corridor. Referencing Cambridge College courtyards, it accommodates movement, meeting and pause, linking entrances, bridges and garden rooms, while rooftop gardens extend this network into a sequence of planted communal spaces.

The building’s form is shaped by a precise negotiation between landscape, skyline and street. Stepped brick volumes respond to the openness of Storey’s Field, forming a sculpted, almost topographic composition of terraces and deep-set openings that maximise light and outlook and give the apartments more outdoor living space. In contrast, the street elevations are more continuous, reinforcing the market square and urban grain, with subtle shifts in massing marking entrances and corners. This dual condition - composed yet irregular - allows The Icon to operate as both a piece of city-making and a lived-in architectural landscape, where form is inseparable from use, outlook and identity.

Won through a limited competition in 2015, construction began in 2019 before pausing during the pandemic and resuming in 2023. The low-carbon building connects to the site-wide district energy centre and incorporates an underground waste collection system, freeing the ground plane for more active uses. The corner gallery has been adapted as the University’s Eddington site office, reflecting the evolving life of the development.