King’s Cross Gasholders
Europe
View Project
King's Cross Plimsoll Building
- Location
- Kings Cross, London
- Client
- Argent LLP
- Services
- Wayfinding
- Sector
- Residential
- Collaborators
- Architect: David Morley Architects Interiors: Johnson Naylor
- Dates
- 2015
Enhancing navigation through the use of a historical motif
The Plimsoll Building is a 13-storey residential development alongside Regent’s Canal at King’s Cross designed around a central communal garden overlooking Gasholder Park. The wayfinding design evokes the history of nineteenth-century shipping to create a visually playful navigation scheme.
A wayfinding scheme rooted in place
The building’s multiple towers with mixed tenures and shared amenities called for a wayfinding scheme that could communicate simplicity and quality in equal measure. Benoy drew on the history of Samuel Plimsoll, the Victorian social reformer whose invention of the ship loading line gave the building its name. Expressing the concept of a loading line above and below water, the signage typography and information graphics are horizontally symmetrical, creating a shifting Plimsoll Line as residents and visitors move between the building’s levels.
