As the paradigm of living shifts and we spend more time at home, standardised cookie-cutter flat layout is steadily navigating towards irrelevancy. Our proposal reformats the conventional residential layout with a bespoke ‘stepped plan’, creating divisions and distinctive zoning, highlighting the various aspects of living within each unique corner. A sense of separation results from these subtle divides, retaining the spacious feel but with an added element of privacy.

Carving into the layout is the spacious garden balcony, acting as a threshold between the interior of the home and light, nature, and its contextual surroundings. The balcony further functions as a receptionist, greeting the inhabitants upon arrival with elements of nature and a view and vistas. The enfilade arrangement of spaces encourages movement and evokes our nomadic sense of discovery.

The design proposal takes cues from the immediate surroundings of the retained historic buildings, identifying, incorporating, and interpolating decorative and architectural elements, from cornices and arches to the distinctive coloured polychrome brickworks and facade articulations.

Now inhabiting the King’s Cross sightline, the intervention calls for a visible and identifiable top, a design language that encapsulates the area characteristics and broadcasts it to the immediate surroundings. The ground plane offers an opportunity for placemaking, capitalising on the existing community’s assets to propose a public area that attracts surrounding communities and promotes people’s health, happiness, and well-being. The proposal features a retail arcade, elongated through the centre of the building, illuminated by the skylight carved through the podium terrace.

Rich and vibrant colours embodying the ground floor pay homage to the area’s industrial past of playing cards manufacturing, elevating the area’s character to devise a sense of disposition and individuality. The design proposal offers an alternative take on vertical gardens, incorporating private garden balconies for each resident. More green areas are dispersed throughout, with the affordable housing units having direct access to the generous podium terrace while the market units are paired with rooftop open terrace gardens, taking advantage of the open air and sweeping views of King’s Cross. This architectural gesture creates an active facade that takes into consideration the relationship with the sun, offering inhabitants different spatial options.