London.Destinations.

Coal Drop Yard vs Borough Market

During this exercise, our students focused their research on two London based commercial destinations: Coal Drop Yard and Borough Market. Coal Drop Yard being one of the most recent developments in the city that created a new retail destination and public space located next to one of the largest stations in London, Kings Cross; and Borough Market being one of the largest and oldest food markets in the city dating back to the 12^th Century.

The Coal Drop Yard saw the redevelopment of a pair of Victorian warehouses into an iconic destination.  Apart from the retail and leisure dimension that it offers the project also aspired to encourage a dialogue to promote new professionals and students from the adjacent Central Saint Martin´s Art School.

The present buildings of Borough Market were designed in 1851 with additions in 1860, and an entrance in Art Deco style in 1932. More recent works includes the re-erection in 2004 of a Grade II listed portico previously situated in Covent Garden. Today, specialty foods are sold, and many restaurants and bars have flourish on the adjacencies of this dynamic hub.

The integration in between railway and road infrastructure contains the scale and centrality of these lively exchange spots that change character throughout the day. Both projects promote goods exchange through strong social interactions.

Students were asked to map these areas, including buildings and public realm, through their physical and material qualities as well as their intangible and performative qualities. The aim was to discover how the buildings and public realm react to similar challenges of circulation, scale and materiality, and examine how each development related differently to their specific urban settings.

To do this, the studio was divided into two groups so that each member of the team could explore one specific topic. The elements to be explored dealt with tangible and intangible attributes in order to reveal the unseen essence. The topics explored were:

1- Circulation and Flow

2- Infrastructure and Network

3- Activity and User

4- Scale

5- Edge and Boundary

6- Pattern and Rhythm

The challenge was to abstract the real building to show only the qualities of the topic the student had chosen to investigate.