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 Sir Jeremy Dixon |
Place for the arts that’s fit for Kings
THE doors of London’s newest arts and music venue open this week – and the New Journal was given a sneak preview behind the scenes of Kings Place.
The building, in York Way, King’s Cross, houses concert halls, art galleries, offices, bars and restaurants. A five-day music festival celebrates it’s opening.
As decorators put the finishing touches to the bars and restaurants, architect Sir Jeremy Dixon led a tour and showed visitors the pride of place 420-seat concert hall, explaining how the building went from the drawing board to reality. He said his team had the perfect starting point before a brick was laid or a hole was dug.
“There is an amazing sense of place here,” he said. “It is in an exciting area, an area with history and an area that is rapidly changing.”
He added he was thrilled to see people coming in to look around before the concert programme kicked off in earnest.
“I feel the place is now really coming to life,” he said. “Suddenly it is a different building – people milling about and enjoying the works, using the stairs, the escalators – it is as if the building has become real.”
An entrance hall in York Way opens into a soaring six-storey atrium, while below ground the building has the largest underground basement area in London.
The Guardian and Observer newspapers have made three-and-a-half floors their home. Other occupants include Network Rail and trendy shoe manufacturer Wolverine, whose brands include Hush Puppies and Caterpillar.
Two orchestras have also set up a permanent residence – the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. They have the new auditorium to perform in and a rehearsal space which can hold 250 people. It boasts six grand pianos made in the Hamburg factory of the famous manufacturer Steinway.
But the aim is to provide visitors with both music and visual arts in one visit, explained Sir Jeremy. The building has a sculpture trail and Sir Jeremy added that the galleries are positioned so that concert-goers can enjoy the works on their way into hear music.
He said: “To get to the main concert hall you come past the arts spaces, which can only add to the experience of people coming to visit.”
He added that the canal, which snakes past the building and provides a basin at the back for visitors to relax next to, had provided practical help for the design team.
“We used the canal to bring in materials and take away debris,” he said. “It helped keep heavy lorries off the streets and it continues to play a role in the building’s feel.”
Permanent moorings for houseboats sit opposite, and Kings Place has provided a berth for the Tarporley, the community barge. The development plans to buy a long boat to stage events and for entertaining.
Kings Place is the first step in the transformation of the area, with developers Argent about to begin work on the King’s Cross railway lands project.
“Over the next decade some 30,000 office workers are expected to move in, while on the Argent site alone, there will be around 1,900 new homes,” a Kings Place spokesman said. |
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