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Architects: Allies and Morrison
- Area: 21840 m²
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:Billy Bolton, Allies and Morrison
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Manufacturers: Kone, LoR Explore, M3, Shawton Engineering
Text description provided by the architects. With a mix of social and market homes at the heart of the King's Cross masterplan, Capella provides a place for urban parkside living in one of London's most exciting neighbourhoods. Three key materials, in cream and green, have been employed to create a carefully considered facade with its own strong identity. The completed building is an important milestone in our twenty-year involvement in the evolution of King's Cross.
Capella is one of the last building residential buildings to complete in King's Cross. It joins an architecturally eclectic collection of residential buildings, grouped around Lewis Cubitt Park on the northern side of the masterplan. A mixed tenure apartment building with three retail units and tenant amenity on the ground floor, Capella provides 120 market and 56 socially rented flats across 14 storeys.
The neighbouring buildings may be stylistically and materially varied yet they function as a family; a good example of how the masterplan's parameter plans work not to dictate style but rather influence massing, orientation, and frontages. Capella's material response to the Lewis Cubitt Park context is specific and deliberate. The cream brick, white balconies and light green sinusoidal surfaced concrete panels of the facade nod to the light elevational tone of the Luma building diagonally opposite and act as a counterpoint to the otherwise predominantly dark palette around the park.
The 'L' shaped building hosts a variety of apartment types ranging from single studios to four bedroomed family apartments, and including duplexes and split level. This variety manifests itself in the facade composition facing east across the park, where the balcony rhythm adjusts to reflect the apartments planned over two floors, and a series of deeper L-shaped balconies are attached to the one and a half height apartments. The vertical and horizontal balance of the facade composition is described in the weight and rhythm of the masonry piers rising through the height of the building, and the contrasting lines of white precast balconies which complete every third floor. This triple height order contains the intermediate and more delicate white metal balconies which project in front of the olive green coloured window frames separated by light green concrete panels.
To the building's north a balconied facade is bookended by the framed elevations on Chilton Square and Keskidee Square. The nine-storey south-facing facade meanwhile is staggered to give each of the flats here a view east towards Lewis Cubitt Park. The twelfth floor is topped with five two-storey houses with private roof top gardens that articulate the skyline.
Inside, the lifts and stairs from the two lobbies lead to simple double-loaded apartment layouts accessed from wide corridors which, where possible, are daylit. The 33 different apartment types all lead to balconies or terraces which often exceed the minimum required dimensions. Johnson Naylor is responsible for the spatial planning and interior design of the market apartments and ground floor tenant amenity. Both tenures have access to and share a 260 square metre planted roof garden.
Though the building's plan is rational and efficient, the building form and its facades are intentionally picturesque. The interior is planned to make a clear and pleasant route from the front door and lobby to each apartment and, once inside, provide apartment plans that are straightforward, easy to use and enjoy the best possible views. The outside is intended to offer a cohesive tenure-blind composition which responds to each part of the building's context and contributes not just to local placemaking but to King's Cross as a whole.
