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It references seven Cambridge buildings and one former proposal and if you get up close you will recognise some of them should you have that kind of knowledge but be that as it may, I appreciate the mix of Classical and Modern.
In the summer sunshine you will be able to see better into or through the recesses and along the balconies and it will become like a fantasy by Etienne-Louis Boullée, a Neoclassical architect, whose unrealised designs foreshadowed Modernism.
Boullée's Mausoleum for Isaac Newton (of Trinity College) preceded, and surely inspired, Murray Edwards College's dining hall and the Planetarium in London's Marylebone Road.
LEAN TO
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
I walked past this sculpture yesterday in the drizzle and immediately thought it the best permanent outdoor sculpture to arrive in Cambridge this decade and perhaps very much longer.
Overcast or no, I have come back today for the photos and, as with most sculpture, I had to learn on the go - I did not know of the sculptor.
The work is entitled Lean-To and combines architectural sections and elevations melded into a whole in marble.
I much appreciate it being in marble. We get Parthenon friezes in marble, caryatids, funerary ornaments and war memorials - all in marble - but not scale models of architectural fantasies. It is striking in its originality.
It is by Shezad Dawood and was installed in Station Road in 2024.