AHMM: King’s Cross Designs ‘Ripped Up’
GooGle wants KinG’s Cross desiGns ‘ripped up’ AHMM given carte blanche to rethink groundscraper
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ore details have emerged of what Google wants AHMM to do on its planned new London headquarters at King’s Cross. This week Google confirmed news that it had told the practice to go back to the drawing board and rethink its plans for the £300 million building. A source close to the scheme told BD: “This is how Google operates. When they are developing technology they take it quite far and then challenge it. This is an extension of that. “It’s just not how anyone else would do it, not least because of the amount of money they have already invested,” he said, adding that Google could still decide to proceed with the consented building.” The scheme was given detailed consent by Camden Council in September and completion had been expected for 2016 - but
Google’s rethink has now delayed this by a year. Allies & Morrison’s Kings Cross masterplan for developer Argent, which won outline consent more than five years ago, specifies the shape of every building, so detailed applications for most buildings are dealt with as reserved matters. But if AHMM’s new design departs significantly from the agreed dimensions for its plot it would have to return to square one with Camden’s planners. This wouldn’t be without risk, warned an architect working on a neighbouring building at King’s Cross. “The outline permission is quite rigid so that all the buildings feel part of the same family,” he said. “Camden is reluctant to depart from it. But I can imagine Google might want their building to stand out more from the crowd.” AHMM declined to comment.
REDEVELOPMENT DRAWS BIG NAMES The King’s Cross redevelopment is the largest of its kind going on in Europe and is so big that it has been given a new postcode – N1C. It will include 50 new buildings, 20 new streets and 10 public squares and runs across 24ha. The new Google building is the best known project planned for the area but David Chipperfield and Allies & Morrison are both working on speculative office schemes while Bennetts Associates is designing a new headquarters for Camden Council which the authority is due to move into in 2015. One of the first signature buildings to open was Stanton Williams’ Central Saint Martins building in Granary Square which the college moved into back in 2011.