New Architecture for the X

I recently went to the opening of the exhibition for King's Cross Charette, at NLA - New London Architecture. The exhibition was the culmination of a one-day design exercise for 20 young architectural practices, challenged by Argent to come up with an innovative design for a King's Cross Central site. They were given a wedge-shaped site adjoining the railway lines and given just seven hours to come up with an urban-design solution.

The resulting exhibition is a rough and ready colourful array of ideas and concepts - on card and paper. One of the participating offices likened it to 'an intellectual Scrapheap Challenge'. It was fascinating stuff - It would have been even more exciting if the winning paper design could have been offered the opportunity to be built in bricks and mortar. Instead this was healthy competition for the sake of it.

The exhibition is open til 29th September, and I would urge you to go along to it. However, even if you are busy for the next consecutive 16 days, it's still worthwhile making the journey to NLA at any time. They have a rolling programme of compelling exhibitions, not to mention a huge model of Central London which had me enthralled for a good 20 minutes. And not just because I like the cute model trees!