King's Cross

Defined by two of the country's busiest train stations - King's Cross and St Pancras - the site for King's Cross had for many decades consisted of derelict railway yards and fragments from an earlier industrial heyday. It, and the surrounding area, experienced significant deprivation and had become a haven for drug dealers, prostitution and a rambunctious nightlife. Yet a hundred years earlier, in the nineteenth century, King's Cross was at the heart of Britain's booming industrial economy.

In 1820, with the construction of Regent's Canal and then in 1854, the construction of King's Cross Station, the area became London's conduit to the industrialising cities of the north. Like iron shavings attracted to a powerful magnet, other buildings sprung up around the station: the Granary Building (1851), Great Northern Hotel (1854), the Coal Drops (1851-60), Gasworks (1860s), the German Gymnasium (1865) and the grand Gothic revival St Pancras Station (1866) and Midland Grand Hotel (1876). These all remain today; indeed, the retention of this industrial archaeology has beena key character of its twenty-first century masterplan.

With the decline of freight by rail and London's transition to a post-industrial economy, the area had fallen into decline by the late twentieth century. The first attempt at a comprehensive redevelopment, with a plan drawn up by Foster + Partners, had to be shelved due to the recession of the early 1990s. By 2000, developers Argent - on the back of the successful delivery of Brindley Place Birmingham - took on the role of developing the land between and directly north of the two train stations. This would subsidise the upgrade of St Pancras Station which was to be the new terminus of the Eurostar service from the continent. This is when we began to work drawing up a new masterplan with Poprhyrios Associates.

The masterplan emerged from the intrinsic patterns and found identity of King's Cross. The site has two sides divided by the Regent's Canal: The southern side defined by the geometry of the two stations, with Pancras Square, a new public space at the heart and providing a focus for the majority of the office accommodation. This is also where the tallest buildings are clustered. Three routes - through Pancras Square, Pancras Road and King's Boulevard - lead north towards the canal. As one crosses the canal, the space opens up in front of the Granary, providing a dramatic new open space lined with restored historic buildings. Beyond this lies a further mix of largely newer buildings with multiple uses.

Across the development, there are to be fifty new buildings, thirty retained historic structures and buildings, twenty new routes and ten new public spaces, including five new London Squares. The alignment of streets is intentional to draw new development naturally into the structure of the surrounding city, with interfaces and adjacencies designed to be inviting, effectively blurring the edges of development. When complete, the project will deliver 280,000 sqm in new workspace; 47,000 sqm of retail, cafes, bars, restaurants and places for leisure; nearly 2,000 new homes; a new university; and a mix of educational, hotel and cultural places.

The site's extraordinary history, the way it had evolved, the pressures that had shaped it, were also enormously important to us in generating the form and nature of the masterplan. Historic buildings such as the Granary were dramatically transformed into the new home of a global arts university - Central St Martins. Transit sheds dating from the mid-1800s were retained to create distinctive retail spaces. Long empty, the oldest purpose-built gym in Britain, was re-imagined as a grand restaurant. The world's first great railway hotel, a faded Grade II-listed building, was given new lustre. Victorian gasworks were integrated into new squares and housing. Regent's Canal was made accessible to the public again. Other natural and landscape features, such as the Camley Street Nature Reserve, were incorporated into the overall masterplan.

About two thirds complete, King's Cross is today one of London's most popular destinations for both businesses to locate and for people to visit. For a commercial development, it has attracted a distinctly international and dynamic tenant mix. Google's European headquarters will soon sit alongside academic and cultural institutions. Companies ranging from Universal Music, BNP Paribas, Louis Vuitton and Facebook have moved in, as has the London Borough of Camden with its new council offices.

The project offers a model for commercial development that takes a long-term view. As they face the pressure to grow within, rather than expand on their urban fringes, London and other post-industrial cities are rediscovering areas that had previously been largely industrial or infrastructural. Often well-located, these areas are primed to spur new compact, and thus more sustainable, development. In responding to this challenge, there are two approaches which might have been taken. The first would have been to treat prospective development as a completely new piece of city, unrelated to its surroundings. Indeed, this is an approach seen in the redevelopment of post-industrial land in many cities. The second is to understand it as yet another layer to add to the existing, to reimagine the historic and contribute to the city with something distinctive and place-specific. At King's Cross, this is the approach we have taken.