All aboard: The new Kings Cross railway station

Let there be light! Let your eye fly upwards and zoom along the white ribs of the new 150-metre-wide canopy – the largest single-span structure in Europe – that soars 20m over the western façade of London’s Kings Cross railway station. Sleek, spare, and modern though it is, I immediately think of the exquisite fan vaulting gracing Gothic cathedrals such as Bath.

Kings Cross is a confluence of overground, underground and rail links. Roughly 90 million people use the station station in the course of a year. Many are Scots: the station is London’s gateway to the north, the southern terminus of the East Coast line. On top of that already heavy burden came the news that London would host the 2012 Olympics, and the decision to create a high speed rail link – the Javelin – between St Pancras and the Olympic village, about six miles to the east. It meant Kings Cross would take on even more traffic as passengers made connections to and from its next-door neighbour.

Finally, as every child knows, this is also the station where Harry Potter and his fellow wizards embark, from Platform 9¾, for Hogwarts. The enormous popularity of those books and films have turned the station a must-see tourist stop, as well.

Originally built in 1852 by engineer/architect Lewis Cubitt, the original train shed had two platforms – arrivals and departures. Over the years Kings Cross expanded, and saw endless changes, including the arrival of the original Flying Scotsman, the first train to reach a speed of 100 miles per hour. Kings Cross became one of the busiest transport hubs in Europe, but at the same time, the neighbourhood around this Grade I listed station went into decline. Hiro Aso, director of urban infrastructure for the architectural firm John McAslan + Partners (JMP), told one newspaper that an early visit to the site was cut short when two prostitutes wielding baseball bats chased him down the street.

A chunk of the station was destroyed by German bombs during the Second World War, and matters weren’t helped by the construction of unsightly retail space tacked onto its southern façade in the 1970s. Indoors, the concourse was far too small to accommodate hordes of passengers arriving and departing around the clock, the vast majority of whom get there via the Underground.

The regeneration of Kings Cross has been bubbling away since 1997, when JMP won the commission to tackle what’s being called the largest urban regeneration project in Europe. It combines reuse, restoration, and new-build, at a budget of £547 million.

From 1997 until 2005, when plans were finalised and construction could begin in earnest, the firm was busy liaising with its client, Network Rail, and the main stakeholders, including Camden borough, English Heritage, and what was then called Railtrack. Simon Goode, associate director at JMP, explains that there were frequent meetings to determine what was wanted, what was needed, and what was possible. These years were also devoted to making planning applications and identifying engineering challenges and solutions.

One of the biggest questions was where to locate the main entrance concourse. Every possibility was explored. John McAslan, the chairman of JMP, says: “We knew that in order for Kings Cross to increase over next 25 years and beyond, the new concourse needed to be at least three times the size of the current one, to handle the amount of passenger traffic. When we began, Network Rail only had ownership to the perimeter of the station itself. The land where we went on to build the new concourse belonged to someone else and that was a problem, because it was an obvious choice for expanding the station.

“Other options included looking at a way that the tracks could be pushed northwards, to make the south concourse deeper. Another was to create a mezzanine within the train shed, or to build a concourse beneath the platforms themselves. So we had a whole bunch of options, all of which were eliminated for various reasons. For example, pushing the platforms out would have cost £600m or £700m, at least, and created problems upstream along the Regent Canal.”

At the same time, London Underground was busy below the station, building a spacious new ticket hall for travellers using the tube, which provides easier and more fluid access to both Kings Cross and St Pancras rail and street-level links.

“By the time we came along,” says McAslan, “we were the third of three big projects taking place here – the other being St Pancras station itself. We had to come up with some very clever engineering ideas to ensure that we didn’t impact on the structure below.”

Equally remarkable is the fact that, unlike St Pancras, which shut for four and a half years, Kings Cross remained open the entire time. Network Rail boasts that there have been no unscheduled service cancellations due to the construction work.

Above the soaring canopy, the new concourse roof is a filigree of glass and steel, fitted with moveable panels. Its airiness contrasts with Cubitt’s solid building, and frames it, enabling us to see through and past the supports to the heavier older structure.

JMP deliberately relocated all the retail outlets to the same area, occupying two floors around the perimeter of their new concourse. It is encased by undulating walls covered in small, white ceramic tiles, that catch the sunlight. Their twinkling suggests movement, echoing the tumult of passengers below.

These structures, McAslan tells me with pride, were created by Swift Horsman, in their offices in Dalbeattie, Dumfries and Galloway. They consist of preformed plywood sections covered by these carefully spaced tile discs. “They did it for about £3½m,” says McAslan, a Dunoon native. “It’s an amazing, handmade thing, done in Scotland!”

In a way, adds Goode, the recession was helpful. Competition was so strong that JMP was able to push its contractors, urging them to go the extra mile: “We wanted to prove that for the same amount of money you can do something great, instead of something mediocre. There were thousands of decisions, every day and countless reviews of the work in progress. It would be easy to hide behind austerity, but why not get the best you can?”

Other notable changes include the construction of a glass passenger bridge, offering access to the platforms, and the relocation of services underground, so that goods are now loaded from below, leaving the platforms free for passengers. The building’s been cleaned, and metalwork repainted in its original grey shade. Best of all, the barrel-vaulted roof has been refurbished and the once gloomy station is now light and airy. The overall sensation is reminiscent of the finale of a makeover programme, when the former frump throws her shoulders back and smiles radiantly for the first time in years.

Monday’s opening of the western concourse isn’t the end of the improvements in the second most densely populated borough of London. After the Paralympics, in September, JMP will finalise the station’s southern plaza, creating an inviting public space.

The area of Kings Cross itself is transforming: property developers are redeveloping the 67 acres north of the station, and central St Martins College of Art and Design recently moved in on a ten-acre site. Kings Place is already a thriving centre full of restaurants and cultural happenings. And Google has been in talks to take over 700,000 square feet of space in the area, which will also boast new streets, public squares, offices and low-income housing.

It’s estimated that 120 million passengers a day will pass through Kings Cross station in the next decade, but thanks to the revamp, it’s increasingly likely that it will be your destination, rather than the place you whizz through en route to somewhere better. So things are looking up in north London – and it all starts when you cast your eyes heavenwards in this astonishing “new” railway station.

Platform Number crunch

•King’s Cross is 160 years old.

•5,447,000 tiles, with a special coating that repels dirt, cover the mezzanine building.

•6 metres was the length of a drawing presented to English Heritage to get approval for the Platform 8 shopfronts.

•At its peak, 28 architects worked on the team, but hundreds have had input over the years.

•6 underground lines connect to the station

•There are 1,400 photovoltaic panels with a total surface area of just over 2,500m2 along the top of the main train shed roof. They are spaced to allow a dappled natural light to filter through to the platforms.

•The station is 160 metres wide and 252 metres long.

•14 foam models of the “tree” structure of the concourse roof were made before the designers settled on the final form

•The station was closed for 0 days for the work

The Architect

John McAslan, who is now 57, grew up in Dunoon and studied architecture at Edinburgh University in 1977. He trained in Boston with Cambridge Seven Associates, then joined Richard Rogers & Partners in 1980. He was a founding partner of Troughton McAslan, then formed John McAslan + Partners in 1996. In 1997 he established the McAslan Family Trust, a charity supporting arts and educational projects around the world. Among the partnership’s projects are the British Embassy in Algiers, the Courts of Justice in Sunderland, the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.