engineering.
With its classic style and solid façade materials, Porphyrios Associates’ eleven-storey building is part of a large-scale regeneration project in the King’s Cross area. It takes a relatively simple rectangular footprint and offers an elegant solution that challenges the format of the modern office block.
Elegant eleven-storey office building in a classical style in Pancras Square
The building is the penultimate plot developed in commercial Zone B of the King’s Cross development. The whole site had been remediated in 2011, which entailed the construction of a new perimeter piled wall on two of the building’s four elevations. Therefore the building design needed to work within these constraints, both geometrically and in terms of the loads and positioning onto these foundations.
Given the building’s regular shape and central core, the size and layout of the building allowed a column-free space to be created by adopting a lightweight composite steel floor structure with an integrated services zone. Set-backs to the north elevation add drama to the façade, but it needed an array of tiered transfer structures within the edge of the steel frame to maintain the column-free space, whilst maintaining the consistent structural zone.
The neo-classical façade was created with precast concrete panels. Their significant weight was carefully and purposefully directed onto the supporting structure either at or near the column locations, negating the need to support the façade mass off what would otherwise be excessively heavy edge beams.
The building was initially designed on a prospective basis with no tenant in mind. However, in the early phase of stage 3, a pre-let was secured for the whole building. The tenant made some subtle yet important changes to the internal layout by adding interconnecting stairs between office floors; a move that was readily implemented due to the nature and adaptability of the base build floor structure.
2015 UK Tekla BIM Award
