Topping Out at Queens'

College President Lord Eatwell performed the traditional ceremony by pouring beer over the roof of the extension which provides extra accommodation and teaching rooms for the college. The beer was Queens' Bar beer, brewed by City of Cambridge Brewery.

The extension takes the form of a lightweight frame clad in zinc on top of the previously flat-roofed 1970s building which dominates the southern end of the Backs along Queens' Road.

The design includes solar shading, natural ventilation and very high levels of insulation to provide a green solution to a number of difficult technical challenges.

It was designed by Cambridge architects Bland Brown and Cole, also responsible for the renovations of both the Arts Theatre and more recently the ADC Theatre, as well as the 1989 Lyon Court for the College. The main contractor for the project, due to be completed in August this year, is R.G. Carter Cambridge Ltd.

Cripps Court was finished in stages between 1974 and 1980. It houses 171 student bedrooms, three combination rooms and a bar, three Fellows' flats and a main dining hall and kitchens.

It was the benefaction of the Cripps Foundation, and was the largest building ever put up by the College. It enables the College to offer accommodation to undergraduates within the main college site for all three years.

This extra floor, to be known as the "Stephen Thomas Teaching & Research Centre", provides 17 teaching offices for Fellows, three seminar rooms and 18 en-suite residential rooms for students or Fellows.

The cost of the new fourth floor was partly met by a substantial benefaction from Catherine Thomas, widow of Stephen Thomas who read Engineering at Queens' from 1971 to 1974. Stephen died in an accident in Antarctica in January 2005. Numerous other alumni also contributed generously to the project.