Marina Two Apartment Building, King’s Cross, London

A four storey apartment block, incorporating six flats and commercial accommodation at ground floor level. Our original design work was carried out in 1994 on the Munkenbeck and Marshall planning permission scheme as part of a two-phase project incorporating the much larger Marina One development. The first phase was completed in 1996, following the sale of the scheme to Regalian PLC. London Buildings decided to retain phase two and completed this at a later date, as part of their Ice Wharf development.

The Marina Two building is adjacent to Battlebridge Basin, forming a spur to the Grand Union Canal system, and the upper floors cantilever 4 metres over the towpath. Given the scale of the project, and that the building is under five storeys, we proposed a relatively lightweight composite structure of load bearing masonry and steel framing, with timber floors throughout. Piled foundations were required because of the poor ground conditions; the site is underlain by 6 metres of fill created by the deposition of excavated material from the Islington Tunnel during canal construction. Foundations were also complicated by the existence of Ice Pits inside the adjacent Canal Museum, that are 12 metres deep and 3 metres away from the site boundary. These were created by a Victorian ice cream manufacturer for the storage of ice imported from Scandinavia. Yeates Design produced the final design, based on the original planning permission scheme. The approximate construction budget was £500,000.

Architect Yeates Design + Architecture
Munkenbeck and Marshall (Planning)