What lessons can King’s Cross teach London in terms of creating a place? And just how seminal was the document that underpinned it – Principles for a Human City?

Twenty years on from the publication of Argent’s 10 principles, a special think tank held on site at Barrafina Restaurant last week with the great and good of the industry and those connected to the project sought to find out.

Argent’s Robert Evans said that although the document had been an important bedrock for its ambitions, ‘they are, in the end, just words’. It was thus crucial to follow them with actions – and today the estate boasts a world-class university and businesses, some 2,000 homes, an eclectic range of shops and restaurants, two schools, sport, leisure, and community facilities. And yet, if Evans was to offer a critique, it would be that there was ‘a lot about the city but perhaps less about the humans in it’, there was little on sustainability, with the word ‘carbon’ not featuring, and today they would perhaps have said more on a vision for housing. The services and stewardship element to the whole estate, however, have been central to the success of the place. ‘We underplay the non-real estate bit’, he said.

Process was also important, said Allies and Morrison’s Bob Allies. The project did not come from a design competition, which was ‘hugely important’, and good masterplans just take time, he said. Elements such as connectivity, variety, proximity (tight spaces between buildings – ‘we have learned to love the canyon effect’) and the geometry of the site were also key to its success. ‘I still think that master planning is a bit like trying to follow the evolution of a city in microcosm’, Allies added, suggesting that they play out for a period of time what happens naturally over hundreds of years.

But it was also important to remember how it was as an area, said architect Alison Brooks, with its dingey reputation giving way to a sense of place, whilst retaining the history of the area.

Peter Bishop – then at Camden and hailed as one of the major influences on the project in terms of his creative and flexible approach to planning – said that one of the main lessons was the long-term approach adopted by the developers, as well as having the benefit of time to think. That and Argent being the only developer, in his experience, to start by talking about a set of principles and its desire to be ‘curious’ and ‘ambitious’ at the same time. A useful and respectful exchange of ideas resulted between all parties. 

Having a set of principles to use as a set of guidelines was a ‘really fantastic start’, agreed dRMM’s Sadie Morgan – something people can go back to and remind themselves about, and which Morgan says has proved useful in her work with the Quality of Life Foundation. ‘It’s an amazing piece of London’, she added.

Central St Martins, of course, was an early boost to the area having moved from nine locations across the capital, and the building designed by Stanton Williams had now resulted in the art school and King’s Cross becoming synonyms, said Alex Warnock-Smith, its programme director, spatial practices. ‘It’s legacy and influence educationally has been massive’, he said.

But another major component of success was land price, said the Bartlett’s Yolande Barnes. ‘Form follows finance’, she said. Had the earlier proposed Stuart Lipton/ Godfrey Bradman Rosehaugh Stanhope scheme gone ahead we could have been looking at a very recently demolished scheme and site akin to ‘another Paternoster Square’, rather than one built on a robust urban framework and healthy mix in the hands of a single long-term landowner. ‘I think what was revolutionary here was that you actually just designed a piece of London’. 

It was – said Paul Williams of Stanton Williams – a seriously tough time due to the looming financial crisis, but the project had been helped by having an excellent team behind it, notably with Robert Evans and Roger Madelin – now at British Land – at the helm. A strength of the masterplan was a certain degree of freedom, allowing serendipitous events and unexpected ideas to impact the scheme, and that must continue with the reins released. A case in point  –  continued Williams  –  is the idea of moving Central Saint Martins into the Granary complex. That wasn’t originally envisaged in the masterplan but, allowing a world class art school to inhabit the centre of the Kings Cross site, turned out to be a marriage made in heaven, and a catalyst for the whole development. From the University’s perspective, it allowed the school to bring together most of their 4500 students under one roof, who were previously located in 9 different sites across London, in buildings all in need of refurbishment. 

David Waterhouse of the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a civil servant and planner, said he was interested in what it was in the planning system at that time that made the scheme work. What ingredients could be used elsewhere across the country? Planning can do so much more than be a regulatory function, he added, Evans commenting that at King’s Cross, at least, it had nothing to do with the planning system but everything to do with the actors in it. Although it is largely ‘quite defensive’, the system can be made to work, and one of King’s Cross’ successes was in allowing a little bit of flexibility to be left in. ‘I don’t meet enough planners with that level of ambition’, said Evans. As a profession, it has an image problem, constant criticism does not help and it needs to grow, he added.

For architect Glen Howells, King’s Cross also held good memories, but also of it being a red-light district and relative ‘no-go zone’ at a time when many cities were ‘broken’. He believed that its successes lay in a bold approach, achieving a mix rather than a ‘monoculture’, and of Argent not being corporate, but instead instilling a sense and culture that all stakeholders could and should have a voice. ‘What we do is not about landmark buildings, but landmark places’.

The scheme is without precedent in London, said Enfield’s Peter George, who is himself seeking to make a similarly transformative effect in Meridian Water. ‘Very few people understood the meaning of the word placemaking’, he said. It also incorporated diversity, said Lee Mallett – who helped develop the principles – even if a ‘tale of two cities’ in terms of rich and poor still pervades across the capital. Was it as mixed as it should perhaps have been, however? Could there have been more in the way of mixed tenure housing? A big lesson, though, was Argent’s ‘democratic’ way of going about things, wanting to ‘embrace and work with the planning system’, and to share knowledge about the place. In those days, we had little in the way of statistics, said LCA’s Robert Gordon Clark, but the ‘Martini principle’ – that they should go anywhere, anytime, held good. Open consultation works, and this openness would serve it well. Samina Shahzady, Partner, Porphyrios Associates, agreed that diversity and the mix were important watchwords, Eric Parry commending its grittiness and ‘strong infrastructure skeleton’ while Emily Gee, whose words were read out at the session, commended the exemplary way in which King’s Cross – ‘a poster child for heritage led regeneration’ had treated its heritage ‘at its heart’, with richness and draw emerging as a result. ‘It really is remarkable and demonstrates how investing in real life infrastructure as well as the chic retail and restaurants is what gives a place true sustainability’. 

 

Other points raised at the session included: comparing the estate’s development to that of Nine Elms, and single versus multiple ownership, criticism of the project from some architects for having old fashioned ‘streets’, the importance of setting up the right culture, architectural variety, the transformational move to take a university as a major tenant, and the way in which viewing corridors impacted on the height of buildings across the site. In the best of all worlds, having a less consistent datum of building heights across the site would perhaps have been one alternative way to go, said Evans. Finally, looking forward, Yolande Barnes said King’s Cross had proved that it could demonstrate a robust, adaptable, long-term income stream. But she suggested a root and branch reform of use classes - or ‘international asset allocation classes’, as she branded them, with no relevance to post-COVID era living, was perhaps needed. ‘I guess if we're looking into the future, I'd really question how designing for those use classes, whether you call them asset classes, or planning use classes is going to serve anyone going forward. And I think that's one of the biggest revolutions to be grappled with, when we're talking about a human city’.