Back to the futuristic

This is only part of the story. The old train sheds and long ranges of mostly mid-Victorian buildings to either side of them are being properly restored, and in some cases rebuilt (there was wartime bomb damage), under the exacting supervision of English Heritage. The hamfisted 1974 extensions that spill out southwards towards Euston Road will be cleared away once the Olympics are over, with a new public square made in their place. The main entrance now reverts to the western side, facing St Pancras. Meanwhile, to the north of the terminus, a swathe of former industrial land is finally being turned into a new city district, a quarter of a century after the idea was first mooted.

The new Central Saint ­Martins art school — famous for fashion, among much else — is up there. It makes excellent use of the goods-yard buildings by the original station architect, Lewis Cubitt. What used to be a wasteland is now traversed daily by the best-dressed (in the creatively eccentric sense) students in the world, wandering in peacock fashion up a new pedestrian boulevard, across the Regent’s Canal and through what is fast becoming another significant square, to their new home. Concertgoers and lovers of comedy and jazz will already know about Kings Place, the office development just across York Way. It has a concert-hall complex in its basement, art galleries at street level and a restaurant at the back, overlooking a canal basin. Designed by the Royal Opera House architects, Dixon Jones, it was stuck out on a limb at first, but is now part of a nascent cultural quarter with Central Saint Martins, which also has the just-opened Platform theatre in it.

As for the commercial stuff, there are to be office buildings and blocks of flats aplenty. It is said that a line of five new linked buildings close to the terminus will soon be built to house the British HQ of Google. For once, all this has not been a free-for-all, but, by British standards, a painstakingly planned process over many years, masterminded by a developer, Argent, with a good record and a good roster of architects, from high modern to neoclassical. You have to track back in your mind — what was this place like before?

It was one of those areas that had lost its purpose, with some residual industry, a parcel depot, decaying historic buildings, a redundant (and equally historic) gasworks and odds and sods like a bleak golf ­driving range. Prostitutes and drug dealers collected around King’s Cross. I sometimes resent the oversanitising urge of planners and developers — a bit of dereliction here and there is good for the soul, and usefully cheap — but I can’t really argue with this project. This is a distinct improvement. Add everything together, and the area is getting about £2.2 billion of well-directed investment. Central Saint Martins is particularly impressive, if a bit dauntingly huge inside. Its architects, Stanton Williams, have ­cleverly used restrained new building to stitch together the historic group, including Cubitt’s imposing granary, which used to transship directly to the canal in front for distribution across London. Their new ­Granary Square here will step gently down to the canal’s edge. It’s not the bathing ghats of Benares, but it makes good use of what was a largely concealed waterway.

The King’s Cross station end of things has been masterminded by John McAslan + Partners. McAslan has developed a historic-buildings specialism: it was he who revitalised another London railway building, the Roundhouse, a few years back. In a way, his new western concourse is a built ­diagram. This was the only direction in which the station could expand, while at the same time it’s been restored to something approaching its original appearance. The curving Great Northern Hotel, again by Cubitt, made a boundary and generated the geometry. The resulting semicircle ­happily pulled in the ends of the ­“suburban” platforms, grafted on later to one side of the main station. Meanwhile, the heritage watchdogs wanted the bulk of the new extension kept low. Beneath it, a huge new Underground ticket hall limited the options still further. Given all these constraints, McAslan and his engineers, Arup, did a clever thing.

It looks effortless, this shallow white dome, but structurally it is complex. As it couldn’t be hung off the old buildings — they couldn’t take any extra weight — that latticework funnel was the solution, acting as a giant spaced-out column. I’m slightly amazed that English Heritage allowed it, but overall the bold approach works. Yes, it could be more delicate, but we’re in a world where public buildings have to be as blast-resistant as possible. It has no columns, apart from round the edge, and it is strong. Nor is it a glasshouse: though daylight enters through the “funnel” and round the edges, the roof is mostly solid.

McAslan and Arup have made some modern-historic references here. One is to the Italian engineer-architect Pier Luigi Nervi, who produced virtuoso domes for the 1960 Rome Olympics. The other is to the 1950s American expressive modernist Eero Saarinen, in particular his fêted TWA terminal at JFK airport, in New York. Well, dream on. The curvy restaurant mezzanine at the back of the space, clad in white ceramic discs, is very 1950s-futuristic, though it feels a bit too big for the space, jammed up against the edge. From here, you can walk at high level to a new overbridge inside the old station, which drops you midway down the platforms. Most, however, will walk at ground level through the southwestern end of the new concourse. The heads of four platforms have been pushed back a few yards to make more space at this entry point. Meanwhile, the ground level of the old Great Northern Hotel becomes a public arcade.

From outside, the new concourse has a clamshell look: surprisingly (deliberately?) unspectacular. The drama is all inside. You can’t beat virtuoso engineering, and the best railway stations are, of course, all about the roof. With this in mind, it’s great to see that Cubitt’s original glazed roof vaults and end windows have been meticulously restored. Photovoltaic panels on top will generate, they say, about 7% of the station’s power needs. Not much, but every little helps. For most of us, it will be enough to be in a place that is not uncomfortably, even at times dangerously overcrowded when we go to catch a train.

For the full effect of all these changes, we shall have to wait until the new ­southern square is built. The effect will be to reveal the southern end of the station much as Cubitt designed it. A sense of space is what you need in a transport interchange that now has 50m people a year passing through — Cubitt provided only two ­platforms, one arriving, one departing.

Ever since they demolished the old Euston station in the early 1960s — and came close to demolishing St Pancras — the remaining old London terminuses have become sacrosanct. These days, we have a lean-to, accretive mentality, and this is surely the ultimate lean-to. You need to be clever, and patient, to do this well. It’s not perfect, but it succeeds. King’s Cross breathes again.