A civic-minded, pink-enveloped office building at Kings Cross, with a public lobby, cinema and a rounded mix of uses.

Argent
Kings Cross, London
£70 million
250,000 square feet

“R7 has a very, very distinct personality, all of its own. It will be the place where the barriers between workplace and public realm start to break down.” Nick Searl, Argent
“R7 is already fully let… which is testament to the high quality design. However, it is R7’s permeability and variety of supporting uses that will have the biggest impact on the King’s Cross estate.” Sam Williams, Project Manager, Argent
“…Nobody has really envisaged future offices becoming extensions of public space and incorporating greater public access and public leisure amenities. This, however, is exactly what R7 does convincingly, which is why its impact could resonate well beyond the revitalised confines of its King’s Cross home.” Ike Ijeh, Building Design
“R7 is an idealised office building, made with large shared areas, flexible floorplates and complimentary uses. It’s off-centre and non-‘prime’ compared to other plots at Kings Cross, and designed for smaller businesses, enabling them to mingle, co-operate and grow.” Ah-Ra Kim, project lead
  • BREEAM Outstanding
  • Access to external space from every floor
  • Multiple-tenanted offices
  • 3.06 metre ceiling height
  • Successful collaboration with Camden planning department
  • Public realm extends into building
  • 3-screen Everyman cinema, restaurant, spin studio and art space
  • 200 bike spaces
  • Soft spots to connect floors vertically
  • Roof terraces

Client: Argent
Executive Architect: Weedon Architects
Structural Engineer: AKTII
Environmental Engineer/BREEAM: Sweco
Facade Consultant: FMDC
Landscape: Tom Stuart-Smith Ltd

Camden Design Awards Our R7 workplace, for Related Argent in the northern quarter of the King’s Cross regeneration scheme, was a winner at the Camden Design Award 2022 in the Major Projects Category.
Red carpet Project Associate, Ah-ra Kim was present at the world premiere of Murder on the Orient Express, greeted by a red carpet
Drawings Section through R7
Light The building form was defined in response to a set of day light codes, limiting the extent of the building form and the alignment to the street at each level as it ascends
Facade By the close of 2016, the façade was substantially completed, providing an early insight into the overall presence of the project within its context
On site during construction With a view of the local context
Interior during construction Looking through the change in grid toward the city
Prefabrication The façade is constructed as a prefabricated unitised system, allowing for a sequential programme of fabrication and installation
The Facade A full scale 1:1 mock -up of one bay of the façade assisted in assessing buildability, tolerances and junctions
On site The building broke ground in a substantial manner in December 2015
A study of building fragment onsidering the alignment of both volumes, the positions of terraces and loggias and the skin rhythm
Experimentation The project was designed through the medium of model making, at all scales, from massing and form making to the more abstract in which commentary of the façade design is observed in isolation
The optimised massing proposal Two interconnected cubic volumes, stepping back independently in response to environmental and masterplan guides
Early observations Analysis of the notion of enclosure and permeability, defining edge and territory
Flowing programme R7 envisaged as a continuously flowing and layered programme from street edge, through street, to roof
Early sketch An early ambition was to achieve height, and to exploit the abundance of south and city facing views
An elemental conceptual study of form, rhythm and composition The sketch study places value on the significance of the step backs and loggias to provide a range of external spaces for each floor plate
An early narrative study In which the function of ‘office’ is supplemented by a variety of additional programmes
Pompeii Forum The ‘forum’ a positive reference point for the internal street, a space in which variegated programmes overlap and converge
Sketch Illustrating the basic plan parameters defined by two interconnected but misaligned volumes, each containing a core, with a range of optimum offsets to between façade and core edge
The Kings Cross site An island within the city sea of London

R7