As you approach Cambridge South station from the west, there is no taxi rank or car park. In fact, there is not even a road, just a sand-coloured cycle and footpath that almost immediately bleeds into the surrounding nature reserve. The station itself is all exposed timber and sloping green roofs, which unfurl down into a long tail-like canopy for cycle parking. Its architect suggests that it looks like a station that has been swallowed by a snake.

If this sounds more like the reception for an off-grid campsite than a busy urban commuter hub, that is because Cambridge South is not just about getting people to and from work. It is also trying to negotiate some of the tensions inherent in the city’s rapid expansion.

On the west side of the tracks is greenbelt, with new housing beyond. On the east side sits Europe’s largest biomedical campus, dominated by AstraZeneca’s £1.3bn UK headquarters. Masterplanned by Herzog & de Meuron, the pharma giant’s estate is heralded by the sawtooth facade of the Stirling-nominated Discovery Centre, immediately opposite the station.

Alongside it, a whole avenue of high-quality, if slightly forbidding, science buildings is taking shape: an aluminium-veiled energy and data centre by BDP, the concrete frame of Hawkins\Brown’s Rosalind Franklin megalab, and a plot earmarked for a six-storey office and conference centre by Jestico + Whiles.

Although the masterplan works hard to create a more human, urban feel at street level, it was important for Cambridge South to appear separate from the campus, says Jan Kroes, director at architect Fereday Pollard & Partners. “If the station had simply followed the same architectural language, it risked being drowned out, while also potentially contributing to the urbanisation of the greenbelt fringe. It became clear that we needed to do the opposite.”

tectural language, it risked being drowned out, while also potentially contributing to the urbanisation of the greenbelt fringe. It became clear that we needed to do the opposite.”