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Studios, Co-Working Spaces & Home Offices

Concrete and containers for London’s King’s Cross creative quarter

Squire & Partners complete Rolling Stock Yard, a new development, providing 57,500 sq ft of workspace for creative small to medium sized businesses

by Nav Pal 23 February 2021

The design concept draws on the area north of King’s Cross St Pancras, historically characterised by transport, freight and industry, and now an emerging creative quarter. 

Converging railway lines and shipping containers are referenced in the nine storey building, expressed as a series of stacked elements with a black profiled steel structure emulating parallel railway tracks running horizontally across the facades.

Within this horizontal grid, full height glazing is softened by a layer of vertical solid oak sleepers and sinusoidal perforated metal screens to offer privacy and shade during daylight hours, and emit a diffused glow at night.  

The building animates the street with bright entrance signage behind a corrugated metal screen. Internally, an industrial palette of exposed concrete, blackened steel and perforated aluminium is balanced by a pair of timber-lined recesses for the reception and café. Unifying the space is a pale grey poured resin floor with inlaid track patterns which define routes from the entrance to the reception, lifts and café. 

The office spaces benefit from natural light on three sides, and all four on the upper level. Every floor has openable windows to allow for natural cross ventilation. Exposed concrete ceilings continue the industrial aesthetic, with suspended lighting tracks directing light up and down. 

Restrooms are designed as self-contained cubicles which include a black Corian worktop and splashback, sink, large mirror and vertical feature lights. The back wall of each cubicle is lined with panels of natural ply featuring an engraved pattern depicting freight containers.

Some 300 sq m of roof space has been planted with wildflowers and grasses chosen to support local populations of birds, bees and butterflies. On top of this planted bed are 120 solar panels, with a further 80 panels on the south façade, providing the building with a sustainable energy source.


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