please empty your brain below
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Yes, it looks very nice on a sunny September morning, but where do meeters and greeters now wait for their friends and relations on a wet and windy February night?
timbo | 27.09.13 - 7:40 a.m. | #
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When I rocked up at 7pm yesterday to gawp and take pics, there were several other people doing the same. I too was struck at the way people instantly 'owned' the space, as if it had been a fixture for a long time.
THC | 27.09.13 - 8:41 a.m. | #
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I know the old ticket hall was too small and a bit grotty but it was the first bit of London I stepped into from a train from places north. I always had a bit of a soft spot for it and am a bit sorry to see it go for all its inadequacies.
I agree with Timbo that it all looks lovely in autumnal sunshine but it'll be horrendous in a blustery autumnal gale and will make a nice ice rink come Winter. I can't think of a London main line terminus where a step through the exit gateline dumps you straight into the street.
The canopy could have been twice as wide to afford more shelter and a better covered way and I doubt it would have detracted unduly from the opened up vista. Try to imagine what it will be like with two train loads exiting the station and people trying to walk under the canopy to avoid rain. It'll just be a jam of people.
PC | 27.09.13 - 9:34 a.m. | #
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the acceptance of new developments is universal. I went to Lewisham on the day that part of the DLR opened, some passengers were carrying their supermarket shopping as if the journey was a routine part of their lives. this effect might be even more obvious at Kings Cross as many people there may have arrived from the North East, not even realising the square is new.
amber | 27.09.13 - 9:36 a.m. | #
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It looks absolutely stunning and on my visit at lunchtime, it also looked like it had been thers for years.
The closeness of the platform end to the edge of the building really does give an indication of how much of a kludge the station has had to have been over the years.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 27.09.13 - 9:46 a.m. | #
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To quote the late, great Douglas Adams on the old KX:
"King’s Cross station...The old frontage to the station reared up above the area, a great yellow brick wall with a clock tower and two huge arches fronting the two great train sheds behind. In front of this lay the one-storey modern concourse which was already far shabbier than the building, a hundred years its senior, which it obscured and generally messed up. Dirk imagined that when the designs for the modern concourse had been drawn up the architects had explained that it entered into an exciting and challenging dialogue with the older building.
King’s Cross is an area where terrible things happen to people, to buildings, to cars, to trains, usually while you wait, and if you weren’t careful you could easily end up involved in a piece of exciting and challenging dialogue yourself. You could have a cheap car radio fitted while you waited, and if you turned your back for a couple of minutes, it would be removed while you waited as well. Other things you could have removed while you waited were your wallet, your stomach lining, your mind and your will to live. The muggers and pushers and pimps and hamburger salesmen, in no particular order, could arrange all these things for you."
Briantist | Homepage | 27.09.13 - 10:09 a.m. | #
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You can enter the Underground from the square, there is an entrance on the right as you exit the main shed, soon there will be 2 entrances.
mclm | 27.09.13 - 10:19 a.m. | #
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These open public areas quickly become part of the furniture, the open area outside the British Library is similarly popular
Mikey C | 27.09.13 - 10:23 a.m. | #
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It looks so much better both inside and out since the redevelopement. However I do miss the old waiting room. It may have looked like a porta cabin but it was warm and quiet and a pleasant enough place to sit if you needed to wait for a train.
Clarence | 27.09.13 - 7:48 p.m. | #
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Have they finished messing around with the former tube entrance by the Post Office on the other side of Euston Road? It's been a severe choke point for at least a year now. Probably longer.
Dave Skinner | 28.09.13 - 12:31 p.m. | #
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When I read about this great new public open space I wondered how long it would be before it got filled with entertainments and food stalls, like so many open spaces in London. Well, it was about a day, for when we went to have a look at the new Kings Cross Square today it was hosting a funfair, a stage with amplified 'acts', various food stalls, and people dressed up as Dickensian characters, Victorian wrestlers, security guards, and, of course, a robotic Charlie Chaplin. OK, it was billed as a 'week of celebration' for the new station, so we'll see what happens next week, though wall posters plugging 'kingscrossevents' doesn't bode well. It's a shame the public so often gets pushed out of London's new open spaces so they can be used as 'venues' like this.
As for the design of the station, the metal bollards and granite seats are fairly inoffensive anti-terrorist precautions, but the total absence of any wastepaper bins anywhere on Kings X or St Pancras stations isn't. So there was nowhere for all the visiting people to put their food wrappers and cardboard cups, except on the floor or surreptitiously behind the St Johns Ambulance tent. Not a good look.
Another intriguing design feature was the way arriving passengers from the North naturally homed in on the ticket gates that had a covered concourse with shops and people the other side of them, which is what you expect of a station. Of course, at the new Kings X these gates are entrance only so there was a pink jacketed 'customer helper' yelling at people to "go out that way" and pointing through the new 'exit' arches. As long new arrivals ignore the fun fair, the amplified stage, the food stalls and the stripy wrestlers, they might eventually find an entrance to the Underground or a taxi. And it's no use looking for someone who's waiting for you as they'll all be in the covered concourse wondering where you are. It does seem a rather inhospitable welcome to London!
ActonMan | 28.09.13 - 9:28 p.m. | #
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Nice post, but in the penultimate paragraph you've caught the "like" virus. As if!
Waterhouse | 29.09.13 - 10:11 p.m. | #
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A vast improvement, but what a pity the canopy cuts across the lower arches, when it could quite easily have been placed higher, perhaps along the string course above the arches.
John
John U.K. | 15.10.13 - 11:13 a.m. | #
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