Facade

Facade continues the architectural thread, although it moves into a very different century. Its starting point is the former Camden Council offices opposite King’s Cross.

The building façade is unapologetically concrete, yet there is far more happening than its weight initially suggests. Repeated projecting forms give the structure a strong identity without relying on applied decoration.

That is what makes this kind of architecture so interesting. Concrete carries the load, but it also provides the visual language. Structure and decoration become difficult to separate because the building uses the same forms for both.

There is a confidence to that approach which Facade borrows from. Heavy materials do not necessarily produce heavy ideas. Repetition can give concrete an unexpected rhythm, while curves can soften something inherently monumental.

Taking that language into porcelain changes the character again. The mass disappears, leaving the geometry behind. What once belonged to a large concrete building becomes flatter, lighter and increasingly abstract.

Facade came from that translation rather than an attempt to reproduce the architecture. The influence remains somewhere in its bones: concrete engineering reduced to a few simple lines and curves.