by The 67-acre, nearly quarter-century, kilometer-long project to redevelop London’s King’s Cross is a monument to its age. Blair-era urban incorporation is conceived, in a third way, on the idea that market forces, wisely guided by light government, can be a force for good. It will go down in the urban history books (if things like this are written in the future), representing its time in the same way that John Nash’s Regent’s Park represents the Regency and the Barbican represents the 1960s.
The architects of his masterplan, Allies and Morrison and Demetri Porphyrios, have now submitted it to this year’s RIBA awards program, which could see it shortlisted for the Stirling prize. This means that although there is still construction to be done, especially on Google’s headquarters, they consider the basic concept of the master plan to be complete. Cadence, a residential building by Alison Brooks Architects, which occupies a peak at one end of the site, is also complete, apart from some snagging. Shockingly, out of more than 30 practices commissioned on the site, Brooks is the first with a woman’s name in the title.
The development runs from the St Pancras and King’s Cross ends through a central open space known as Grange Square, to a compact cluster of blocks and towers at its northern end, formed around a long green and headed by the Brooks building, which includes the most. of the latest additions. It is doing brilliantly, from a commercial point of view and from the point of view of achieving the specified aims. Its developers, Argent (picked up in 2001), aimed to achieve somewhere like the kind of cities you might want to go on holiday to, with open spaces that one of its architects calls “extremely pleasant”, and – thinking of children from the surrounding areas. playing in his fountains, or office workers and art students sitting in his open spaces – he certainly did. It has created, in its 50 new and renovated buildings, around 1,700 homes, more than 40% of which are affordable, 30 bars and restaurants, 10 new parks and public squares, 4.25m square feet of offices and capacity for 30,000 office jobs .
Criticism of its architecture thus falls into the category of “wouldn’t it be good if” rather than a fundamental abandonment of it. But it evokes a hard-to-define feeling that something is missing. For some this may be a lack of urban grit, but it is difficult and somewhat absurd to design this quality into new buildings. The development on its own, and the conflict and tension, seem more nervous. Opportunities for drama, the push and pull of old and new or high and low are largely reduced.
The character of the new labor is determined by a combination of ambition and negotiation. This area was created by brutal industrial companies, who built railways and canals and warehouses that could not care less about anyone who might live there, or that could have an environmental impact or conservation or public space . He created blunt structures such as the multi-level food distribution center known as the Granary and a celebrated array of gas holders that bypassed their surroundings in their time. Today’s capitalism produces ever larger structures, office blocks and apartment buildings that make the industrial heritage seem small, but aim to reduce its scale.
The ambiguous quality of development comes from the circumstances of its conception. The opportunity for major construction arose largely from the consolidation of land for the purpose of building the Channel Tunnel rail link into St Pancras station. At the same time the site was a complex series of listed buildings, and the local community some loud protesters. When permission was given, in March 2006, it was only after a planning meeting that lasted into the wee hours, and a little narrow.
The architects did not propose any grand vision. Their plan lacked design codes – the device by which consistency and uniformity are sometimes applied to large developments. Instead, an irregular layout of streets and squares emerged from patterns that already existed on the site – the streets crossing from side to side, the canal that runs across it, the historic structures. Architects of individual buildings were given “parameter plans” that generally indicated their relationship to their neighbors and to fulfill what Allies and Morrison call their “duty to contribute to the greater whole”.
There is a reluctance to let things be completely what they want to be, whether it’s a big thumping building, or an industrial relic, or a pavement cafe
The master plan is based on “pictorial” principles derived from the theories of Camillo Sitte, a 19th-century Austrian planner who admired things like how a church tower could appear along a windy medieval street. The idea is to create a place where you are “invited” from one space to another, where all the parts connect, and where the buildings are not as important as the spaces between them, and where the boundaries with the surrounding areas are blurred , so that the development might feel like a continuation of the rest of the city rather than a place apart.
The result is a series of contrasting spaces that cover the site from one end to the other: a long boulevard running from the train stations to the center of the site; a square looking in on one side, then a more open piazza opposite the Grange; then that long long lawn framed by buildings rising up to 15 storeys, leading towards the far end. Courts and smaller streets intersect the blocks on the sides of this central progression.
It’s all well and good, and an understandable response to the failure of more assertive planning. There are buildings of various levels of beauty along the way. But it is strange to put together the strength of the new buildings; for treating multi-storey blocks as if they were street houses in a charming old European town, which they are not. It wouldn’t hurt if there was a space or two more decisive, and if there was a set piece of the kind that Nash would put on from time to time.
The new buildings also represent some uncertainty at ground level. There are shops and food outlets, and there are paths that sometimes carry outdoor seating, parasols and planters, which are used quite well, but often there is nothing particularly pleasant or planned about the relationship. The streets and open spaces in the newer blocks to the north feel diagrammatic. There is generally a reluctance to let things be completely what they want to be, whether it’s a big thumping building, or an industrial relic, or a pavement cafe. Perhaps this comes from a de-risking attitude – with many hazards in the completion of the project, the developers may not have wanted to take too many chances with the architecture.
The Alison Brooks building, standing at the end of a long vista, adds some of the vibrancy that other buildings lack. It consists of a pair of conjoined red brick towers, one tall and central, the other off-centre and angled away from the prevailing right angles, with jiggered rhythms of recessed windows and balconies. There are irregular arches at the top and bottom, and at one or two places halfway up, which follow the not-quite-circular Bézier curves, which are old-future, Sahara-Star wars feel. They have a polite bounciness, obviously not carrying much weight. In the vestibules and on some of the upper floors, the arches extrude into vaults, which create interesting layers of space inside and outside due to the branches in the plan and the small courtyard. Not every building needs to be this complicated, but it adds a sense of adventure.
King’s Cross went 180 degrees from a place of dirt and danger, notorious for drug use and sex work, to a place of cleanliness and safety. There are those who lament the loss of the creative racket and cinematic excitement that accompanied the old version, but, without naming the crime as a cultural heritage asset, it is difficult to know how that character could have been retained. Places change, and the incredible enjoyment that Allies and Morrison speak of is no small feat. I just wish the King’s Cross had as much personality as previous iterations in its latest transformation.
