King’s Cross Charrette

Sixteen practices were invited to prepare a mini-masterplan for a site alongside the King’s Cross Central development during the course of a day. Our strategy was to identify existing urban qualities and reflect them across the site in the hope of transforming incoherent urban fragments into connected pieces of city. We called this process Twinning, as the site seemed to naturally offer pairs of spaces: new parks either side of the canal; mirroring the churchyard about the hospital buildings to make a new residential quarter surrounded by gardens; connecting the avenue of mature trees along Agar Grove with Camley Street Nature Reserve to make a green spine; densifying the light industrial uses besides the railway to balance the Kings Cross development opposite.