330 Gray's Inn Road

330 Gray’s Inn Road is a 356,000sqft mixed-use masterplan on the site of the former Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in King’s Cross, central London. The proposal consists of five buildings: • A 180-room hotel with leisure uses, including restaurants, bars and café. • A 100,000sqft office building with two floors that are lab-enabled for future market and tenant flexibility • 72 residential units of mix tenure including private market apartments and affordable family homes across two buildings with a shared residential garden between • New public connections at ground floor leading to a public courtyard away from the busy vehicular routes surrounding the site. The courtyard and residential gardens have been designed in collaboration with EAST Architects. • A site wide energy centre with an all-electric heating and cooling system supported by air source heat pumps and additional photovoltaics panels. The urban arrangement of the buildings, courtyards, garden, and public routes will reconnect and invigorate a large vacant site within a disconnected Victorian quarter of former industrial glory. The existing hospital facility has been subjected to an ad-hoc expansion over its 150-year presence. The proposals seek to reflect this character through a set of new buildings with a fine urban grain and a varied architectural character that enhances the conservation area in the heart of King’s Cross. The existing hospital buildings create a barrier forcing pedestrians onto the busy road network. The proposal creates a series of new connections to Wicklow Street, a quiet, cobbled street of special character. These routes intersect at a new active public courtyard between the office and hotel offering new walking routes and a place to dwell. Fronting Gray’s Inn Road, the original hospital building will be retained as a public facing building with a new public connection leading to an enclosed hotel courtyard and onto the public courtyard. The new elements of the 180-room hotel have been designed across two different volumes each with a profiled glazed terracotta cladding. The taller orange coloured element references nearby red brick buildings with a vertical expression and open corners. The other is lower and finished with an off-white profiled terracotta arranged in a grid-like manner. Centrally located within the site, the 100,000sqft office and lab-enabled building has a cranked elevation following the bend in Wicklow Street fronting the new public courtyard. Cascading terraces face the residential garden reducing overlooking and maximising daylight. The facade material selection, proportion of openings and level of detailing respond to the four different surrounding streetscapes. The Swinton Street building provides 28 affordable homes with short gallery access along the road facing side, with the rear benefiting from an aspect over the shared residential garden. The facade is elegant and simple, using brick and precast concrete elements to create a bookended building. The Wicklow Street building provides 44 private apartments above affordable workspace. The building is sculpted on all sides with setback terraces above a cantilevered element adjacent to the railway. The facade treatment has a strong, robust and textured base with inset balconies, above sits a more framed expression with scalloped concrete.