King's Cross Masterplan

by Allies and Morrison and Porphyrios Associates

Client Argent on behalf of King’s Cross Central Partnership

Award RIBA London Award 2024

Although its last new buildings are just being completed, the redesigned King’s Cross is beginning to feel like it has always been there, and that, crucially, it ‘works’. There is no higher testament to the success of a masterplan as a piece of city-making.

Its story began over 20 years ago. From the start, the project team set out their ‘principles for a human city’, based on offering character, variety, choice, and a sense of belonging which can underpin rapidly changing patterns of social and economic behaviour. These have been deployed not in a grandiose manner, but through careful understanding and reshaping of found geometries, stitching a previously cut-off part of the city back into the wider urban fabric. Excellent buildings by a range of architects characterise the campus, but all in a way that informs and substantiates the critical open spaces and routes which are the project’s true legacy.

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal.

Co-masterplanner Porphyrios Associates

Landscape Architect Townshend Landscape Architects

Landscape Architect Applied Landscape Design

Engineering Arup

Engineering Sweco

Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant Gardiner & Theobald

Structural and Services Arup

Photography John Sturrock

Gross internal area in m² 685400