Kings Place facts for kids
Kings Place from York Way
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| Address | 90, York Way London |
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| Designation | Grade A Commercial |
| Type | Classical / Contemporary music, Arts / Cultural venue, Spoken Word, commercial office space, restaurant |
| Capacity | Hall 1: 415 seats Hall 2: 200 seats |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 2008 |
| Architect | Dixon Jones |
Kings Place is a cool building in London, near the King's Cross area. It's a special place where you can enjoy music and art. The building also has seven floors of office space. Since December 2008, the newspaper The Guardian has had its main offices here. It was also once the headquarters for Network Rail and CGI.
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What is Kings Place?
Kings Place was built as a large office building. Construction started in 2005 and finished in the summer of 2008. The building officially opened with a festival on October 1, 2008. Later that year, it became the home for The Guardian and The Observer newspapers.
Kings Place has the first new public concert hall built in central London since 1982. Other concert halls like Cadogan Hall were made from older buildings. This means Kings Place offers brand new spaces for performances, art shows, and learning.
Fun Things to Do at Kings Place
The areas for music, art, and restaurants are all around public spaces. These spaces form a central hub in the building. You can even visit commercial art galleries for free. Kings Place is home to the Aurora Orchestra, which is their main orchestra. Other groups like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and London Sinfonietta also perform there often. The opera company OperaUpClose moved to Kings Place in 2015.
Kings Place Music Foundation
The Kings Place Music Foundation is a charity that runs the music areas at Kings Place. This charity helps create a rich and busy music program. They get money from ticket sales and by renting out the Kings Place facilities. These facilities are used for rehearsals, recordings, and conferences.
The charity works with music and art groups. They offer many learning activities for the local community and the public. These activities started even before the building was finished. They continue to grow each year. The Foundation wants everyone to enjoy creative spaces and activities. They offer affordable prices for all.
Where is Kings Place Located?
Kings Place is on the east side of York Way. It is about 150 meters from the King's Cross and St Pancras train stations. On its eastern side, the building looks over Battlebridge Basin. This basin is part of the Regent's Canal. Many residential boats are docked there, and it's also home to the London Canal Museum.
Central St Martins, a famous art college, moved nearby in 2011. This brought a big art community to the area.
Building Design and Features
The architects, Dixon Jones, designed Kings Place to be a very high-quality building. They wanted it to be strong and last a long time. The design also needed to be spacious and good for the environment. It was important for the building to fit in with the different sizes of other buildings nearby.
Unique Glass Walls
The building has wavy glass walls along the side facing York Way. This special glass wall has three layers. It is made of hundreds of slightly curved glass sheets. This design helps keep the building cool from the afternoon sun. It also makes the building stronger against wind. The wavy glass gives Kings Place a very unique look.
Facilities at Kings Place
Kings Place has many different spaces for events and activities:
- Hall One – This is a concert hall with 415 fixed seats. There are 302 seats on the main floor and 113 in the balcony.
- Hall Two – This space is flexible. It can seat 200 people for performances or hold 330 people standing.
- St Pancras Room – This room is for talks and speeches, seating 100 people.
- Three Rehearsal Spaces:
- Limehouse Room
- Wenlock Room
- Horsfall Room
- Recording and broadcasting facilities are also available.
- There are general dressing rooms for performers.
- The London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have their offices here.
- The Music Base – This is a shared office space for smaller music groups.
- Pangolin London – This is a gallery that shows sculptures.
Hall One: The Main Concert Hall
Hall One, the main concert hall, is a special part of the building. It's like a box that sits on rubber springs. This design completely separates it from the rest of the building. This means sounds from outside don't disturb the music inside.
The hall is built in a regular shape, like a double cube. This shape is thought to be best for small concert halls. Columns around the hall are set away from the walls. This allows curtains to be pulled between them. These curtains can change the sound for speeches or amplified music. Hall One won two awards in 2009: the "Commercial and Public Access" award and the top "Gold Award" at the Wood Awards.
Amazing Acoustics
The sound quality, or acoustics, in Hall One is excellent. This was planned by the architects and sound experts. Before designing, they visited many concert halls in Japan. They wanted to understand what makes a concert hall sound great. They even made a computer model of Hall One. They tested it against models of famous halls like the Concertgebouw and the Wigmore. This helped them make Hall One's design perfect before building began.
Special Oak Wood
The beautiful oak wood inside Hall One came from one 500-year-old German oak tree. This tree was named Contessa. After being cut down, the wood was boiled for a week. Then it was sliced into thin sheets. This one tree produced enough wood to cover a very large area. This special wood covers the panels, columns, and even the back of the seats in Hall One.
Food and Drink Options
The Rotunda Restaurant is located in the part of the building that faces Regent's Canal. The Rotunda Bar has a curved bar that matches the building's shape. The Green & Fortune Café is in the central area of the building on the ground floor. Green & Fortune handles all the food, drinks, and events at Kings Place.
Office Spaces
All seven floors above ground at Kings Place are used for commercial offices. From some angles, Kings Place looks like four separate buildings joined together. This design helps bring light and an open feeling into the building, even to the basement. However, bridges connect each of the upper floors. This makes them feel like one very large space for office workers.
For people working in the offices, there are no regular staircases for daily use. The only way to reach the upper floors is by using the lifts. The two main staircases are only for use in case of a fire.
Community Outreach Programs
Kings Place helps people discover the arts in nearby areas like Islington and Camden. The Kings Place outreach program works in three main areas: Education, Community Engagement, and Family activities. Music and art groups that perform at Kings Place offer classes and workshops. They also provide chances to take part in performances and family events.
Past projects have included drumming workshops for families. There have also been professional development sessions with the London Sinfonietta. They even worked with musicians from the Ugandan Dance Academy. Another project involved local schools and the Visual Learning Foundation. They used the building's construction as inspiration for art.
