Three years ago, QODA opened its Cambridge studio with a simple ambition: to be part of the city’s future. To work alongside its architects, developers, and institutions on buildings that would genuinely last.
Cambridge moves at its own pace. It has its own way of doing things, and if you want to understand a city, the best advice is to move through it the way its people do. So to mark three years of QODA in Cambridge, we did what any self-respecting Cambridge resident would: we got on our bikes.
Cycling across the city, we retraced a route that tells the story of our work here, from cutting-edge university facilities to pioneering low-energy homes, from nationally significant library collections to historic college buildings that have stood for centuries and needed careful, considered engineering to carry them forward.
The result is a short film. It’s our attempt to show, not just tell, what three years of building services engineering in one of the world’s most remarkable cities looks like.
A studio built on ambition.
When we established our Cambridge studio, the city was already a destination for some of the most technically demanding building projects in the UK. University expansion, life sciences growth, a housing sector grappling seriously with energy performance, Cambridge was, and remains, a place where engineering excellence isn’t optional.
In three years, our Cambridge team has grown steadily, taking on projects that span sectors and scales. Each one has pushed us to think harder, design smarter, and deliver with greater precision.
Some of the projects on our route.
Our cycle took us past multiple projects that each represent something distinct about what QODA brings to Cambridge and what Cambridge demands of its engineers. Projects include:
Fen Road
Passivhaus-certified affordable housing delivered with the Cambridge Investment Partnership, setting a new benchmark for low-energy residential design in the region.
Pepys Building, Magdalene College
A landmark collegiate building housing one of Cambridge’s most treasured historic collections, our work included precision environmental engineering within the library to protect its irreplaceable contents.
Christ’s College Library and Kitchen
New build library building extending from the sensitive refurbishment and upgrading of building services within the historic collegiate environment.
Donald McIntyre Building
High-performance decarbonisation of building services within this academic building for the University of Cambridge.
Across each of these, the thread is the same: early involvement, deep technical thinking, and an honest commitment to buildings that perform in reality, not just in the model.
“Cambridge has been one of the most rewarding places QODA could have chosen to grow. The projects here demand the best of us technically, creatively, and in terms of how we collaborate. Three years in, we’re only more excited about what’s ahead.”
Tom Cardy, Director
Cambridge isn’t standing still. The city’s ambitions, in housing, in research, in sustainability are as demanding as ever. And that’s exactly where QODA wants to be: at the early design stage, shaping what’s possible before decisions become constraints.
We’re proud of what the last three years have produced. We’re even more focused on the next three.
If you’re working on a project in Cambridge and want to talk about what great building services engineering looks like from the start, we’d love to hear from you.
