Legal precedent - architectural design of Cambridge University's Law Faculty building - includes plans and illustrations

Architectural Review, The, March, 1996 by Tony Hunt

Characteristically the concrete performs more than one task: as well as holding up the library, it carries communications, fire alarm, and security system points cast within it, while its heat retentive mass plays a key part in controlling the effects of solar irradiation.

In general this building inspires feelings of modified rapture. It is a confident, sweetly functioning work of architecture, which without being in the least self-effacing is a surprisingly tactful addition to the Sidgwick Avenue campus. But something is missing. There is a lack of fluency, a lack of elan and a disturbing muscularity in some of its components that seem uncharacteristic. It will be fascinating to see how Foster manages to knit together his Law Faculty with the next phase - a more restrained group of barrel-vaulted faculty buildings for English and Criminology. These will bring the Sidgwick Avenue complex right up to West Road, and reinforce the north-south axis of a campus which, one day, will surely run all the way up to the University Library itself.