architectural dialogue

One of the more peculiar experiences in my life was sitting midst the Foster team at Kings Cross, sometime in the late ‘eighties. There were playing at being master-planners. I was playing at being an office building consultant … Yeah, well … Myself and another chap I was with came up with a way of approaching site potentiality issues which was meant to inform the design work. However, the Foster team lived in another, strange kind of universe. What was most intriguing was the politics of seeing Associates almost rip each other’s throats out in order to win some game of rivalry and get ahead with this week’s brightest idea that would impress The Man when he turned up.

The current master-plan for the Kings cross / St Pancras area. St Pancras is on the left; Kings cross is on the right. Completion will not be until 2020. The scheme comprises 20 new streets, 10 major public spaces, 50 new buildings, 20 historic buildings, and 8m sqft of mixed-use spaces. 2000 new homes are planned (44% 'affordable'), with the first stage of 143 homes coming through in 2013. CF: http://www.kingscrosscentral.com

Why do I tell you this? Well, it all came back to me a few week ago when I went to visit the first significant building to be completed in the new Kings Cross master plan (more than 25 years after the Foster experience, I might add): one of London’s most prestigious art schools housed in the very same early (and, of course, Listed) Victorian train sheds that had been a key feature of our consultancy all those years ago. These buildings were quite something: imagine multi-storey warehouses sitting above a canal that linked the metropolis to northern England and served as a monstrous transport interchange between the canal and the railway system. It had once been an incredible scene … Now, the complex of historic buildings formed the core to a schema put together by Stanton Williams for the Kings Cross developer (Argent) and its star cultural client: Central St Martins College of Art and Design. Once, developers turned to art pieces (think of somewhere like Broadgate and Canary Wharf); now, they wanted an whole art institution as the ‘strawberry’. (Sorry: Japanese concept from the ’90s. It is exemplified at More London, where the Shuttleworth / Foster City Hall is located and plays out the same role of ‘strawberry’ – in this case almost literally – to the commercial development.)

John McAslan's roof to the new entry concourse to Kings Cross station. Nice overall scheme, but the final design doesn't look too promising ...

The day began well: breakfast in old St Pancras Station – now home to the Eurostar trains from Paris – midst crowding commuters and hungry travellers doing something similar to us on the lower concourse level  … Then out past the new work on Kings cross Station (sorry, Mr McAslan, it doesn’t look promising!) and along a new pedestrian way that lead past a host of sites for new office buildings, straight to the front door of the newly opened CSM, now welcoming a fresh 2011 intake of enthusiastic students. Everywhere around us were men working, machines digging, concrete being poured, barriers channelling us  … and midst it all was the historic complex of former industrial buildings, now supplemented by new accommodation that knit together, added to and occasionally took away some old bits (leaving intriguing ‘scarring’). Simply at that overall, master-planning level it is all rather impressive (and radically different from what Foster had proposed).

The approach from the stations up to the CSM buildings. The sites to left and right will have office buildings from some of the best of London architectural practices.

Looking back from CSM to St Pancras – quite a building site.

We met with the Job Architect who very kindly was giving up some two hours of his time to show us around: into reception and security checks, signing in, badging up … (‘who? why” … Oh, here: have a badge and go through there …’) and back out to public areas topped by an inflated pillow roof before entering through the CSM security barrier and into a large new atrium that serves as the centre of gravity of the new architectural schema.

The entry / security barriers into the CSM atrium

All kinds of memories and references crowded in: particularly Neils Torp at Waterside, at Heathrow Airport, and Ron Herron at Imagination … Oddly, the Job Architect hadn’t experienced these … Ravensbourne?, I asked. Yes, he’d been there a few times and we all agreed we detested this 2010 exercise a few miles away on the Greenwich Peninsula – a most peculiar exercise in digitising craft traditions (‘fashion student? well, you can work it up on machine and print it – whatever it is – on a large printing machine; yes, sure, it all ends up 2D, but what the hell… Oh, and by the way this place works on the Ryan-Air principle of education: you pay to get in, pay to move about, pay for absolutely everything …) Yuk. Foreign Office had done a good enough job (although I’m not keen on their Penrose-tiled wrapping facade that has zero to do with internal arrangements), but the conceptual basis of Ravensbourne is depressing. Luckily, CSM isn’t anything like that. On that basis alone the place is profoundly impressive. I loved what Stanton Williams had sought to achieve and where that had succeeded …. However, this the 21st century: they were under the control of the main contractor and and had no influence over the fit-out. Pringle Brandon handled that. Now imagine: One of the UK’s most ‘creative’ organisations hands over the control of its new building to contractors and their value-engineers who then take on board two disparate architectural firms – one for shell and core, and the other for the ‘scenery’ of a fit-out (I told you I had an offices consultancy background). If SW were on target all the way through, PB were equally off-target. Their work wasn’t ‘bad’, it’s just that the ‘tone’ was utterly wrong for this kind of institution. Where SW offered gutsy but carefully considered detailing, PB gave us corporate furniture and effete detailing. Ultimately, it was depressing – I was back to living midst the Foster team. Such is life, such is predicament of today’s architects, such is the constraints upon what they can do … as Herman Hertzberger, the RIBA 2011 Gold Medal winner  lamented. I was still bemused by the irony with which an institution like CSM could oversee such an equation and had, it seemed, exercised little taste or influence upon the fit-out. How on earth could an ostensibly ‘creative’ organisation of such repute allow this to happen?

The public area between the CSM reception and the atrium – a nice move. Note the old warehouse beyond; this now houses the library on an upper level. Note the retained 'scarring'.

'Open Day' being handled in the new classrooms that overlook the atrium.

And so we made out ‘thank-you’s’ and headed off – impressed, but only in a qualified way. If only SW had been allowed to follow through!  God save us from the construction industry’s ‘practical men’ and the project managers and the client execs and … So, we were back at St Pancras station. And now it was other kinds of memories: of coming here to the renovated Midland Hotel of George Gilbert-Scott on a tour of its public and private spaces with a group of camera-clicking Russian interior designers … That was equally weird and redolent with the same keynotes of mismatch and corporate misses (this time between Scott’s amazing old hotel of the 1870s and how it had been turned into the Renaissance Hotel) … What is it about the corporate mind-set and how its screws up anything of worth? It’s not that they don’t try. Perhaps it has always been this way. But exactly what is it that offends? What is it that one values in a project potentiality and sees compromised? At CSM, SW had shown us the promos, but had  given only a partial delivery – frustrated, compromised … Pringle Brandon had exhibited a crass insensitivity; their habits of taste were simply inappropriate … (Ah, I hear you say: the issues of taste, aptness, fit, etc!) And the SW Job Architect was most dignified about it all.

Anyway, before I forget: what a development going on! Kings Cross promises to be a huge improvement on whatever Foster and his team had been scrabbling to achieve all those years ago. I look forward to the construction unfolding and to finding CSM in a new setting … OK, well, I somewhat look forward and somewhat dread what I know will be another familiar exercise of the sacrifice of significant architectural talents to the Gods of project abstraction that are always a means to end that is somehow never achieved …

The old Foster scheme as we were working on it: the Listed buildings. We did dozens of drawings like this and as a site parcel draft 'encyclopaedia' for the Foster people to work on. They ignored them!

The late '80s scheme for the Listed buildings that I works on as a supposed expert in offices and conservation whilst at DEGW, sat in on the Foster team in their KC offices. Unlike current proposals, we worked hard to retain existing water basins (probably unrealistically!).

The central part of the old Foster scheme as I worked on it: the Listed buildings area where CSM now is. KC station is at the bottom.

The original Foster KC scheme of land parcels. The CSM school is now in are '1'. The Foster intention was to fill up all surrounding 'parcels' with office buildings. The local planners objected to this 'commercial island'. The current scheme where CSM is, is basically the central oval of the Foster scheme and the area tots southern edges.

We all love Airstreams ... This one is an atrium cafe.

A cool way to spend one's lunch-time ... The atrium bears parallels with those designed by Neils Torps (e.g. at Heathrow for BA). Strangely, the job architects didn't visit Waterside.

View down the atrium.