The workshops of Ken Shuttleworth and Wilkinson Air take a different approach to the problem of these abandoned industrial structures, due to the unequal importance of these buildings to the city.
Wilkinson Air is proposing to turn the famous gas tanks at King's Cross into a residential complex. Despite their status as a monument of the 2nd category, they have already been dismantled and will be moved to a new location, closer to the Regents Canal, as part of the implementation of the general plan for the comprehensive reconstruction of the surrounding industrial zone. One of the four huge cylinders will be rebuilt as a hollow frame, while the other three will be converted into a 144-apartment residential complex reaching 11 floors. Inside the original frame of each will be a glazed volume with a covered atrium in the center; almost all rooms will be wedge-shaped.
This residential complex is just one of the new developments to appear in the Kings Cross area in the coming years: it will also house the London University of the Arts campus for 6,500 students, the new headquarters of Sainsbury's, about a dozen office buildings and a residential area of 2,000 apartments.
Shuttleworth's Make workshop project for the Nine Elms gas tank complex near the Battersea power plant is more radical: these structures are supposed to be demolished to the ground, and in their place a complex of 4 high-rise buildings, rounded in plan and slightly reminiscent of their "predecessors", will be erected. They will be located around the green space, and the plants will also be planted on their roofs.
