Cadence in Bloomberg CityLab — “A New London Landmark Bridging Victorian Rail & Ancient Rome”
You can now read the humanist and innovative story of Cadence on Bloomberg CityLab.
“Across large parts of London, architects and developers face a common conundrum. On one hand, they need to create contemporary, state-of-the art buildings that maximize a site’s potential. On the other hand, they also need to be acutely sensitive to historic cityscapes… Cadence, a new apartment complex in London’s King’s Cross designed by Alison Brooks Architects, manages to tread the line between these two needs with elegance and invention,” writes Feargus O’Sullivan for Bloomberg CityLab.
The mixed-use residential building establishes the northern threshold of the Stirling Prize-shortlisted King’s Cross masterplan, recognisably defined by human-scaled arches, active street frontages and a slender tower that forms a welcoming beacon at the neighbourhood’s park edge.
“A large but by no means overbearing complex built on a former goods yard directly behind a Victorian railway terminus, Cadence harmonizes with the older architecture in its vicinity, without descending into pomposity or historicist cosplay,” O’Sullivan adds.
To achieve its ambitious performance and sustainability goals, Alison Brooks Architects delivered construction documents enabling off-site fabrication for 85% of the building’s components – dramatically reducing waste and construction time while achieving excellent thermal and acoustic performance – uniting digital precision with traditional bricklaying craft.
“Off-site fabrication is the future of construction, because I think it’s our only way to achieve anything close to zero waste,” says Alison Brooks. “Prefabrication addresses the emissions associated with material waste by manufacturing components in a controlled environment. With an extremely compact building site, there was no space for on-site storage – every element arrived by truck and was lifted directly into place.”
