05.2024

Our residential courtyard-tower, Cadence, at King’s Cross for Related Argent was given special mention in this Sunday’s Guardian/Observer Newspapers. Rowan Moore highlighted Cadence via a thoughtful retrospective, as a key feature in the King’s Cross masterplan.

We applaud Camden Council, Related Argent and the countless talented individuals from various fields who have contributed to the overall project’s success. With over two decades of evolution, King’s Cross has been rightfully submitted for this year’s RIBA awards program.

“Alison Brooks’s building, standing at the end of a long vista, offers some of the vivacity that other buildings lack. It consists of a conjoined pair of red brick towers, one tall and central, the other off-centre and angled away from the prevailing right angles, with jiggered rhythms of windows and recessed balconies. Irregular arrays of arches appear at top and bottom, and at one or two places halfway up, that follow not purely circular Bézier curves, which have an ancient-futuristic, Saharan-Star Wars feel. They have a mannered bounciness, palpably not carrying much weight. In the foyers and on some of the upper floors, arches extrude into vaults, which with the twists in the plan and a small courtyard create intriguing layers of inside and outside space. It’s not that every building need be as complicated as this, but it brings a welcome sense of adventure.” – Rowan Moore

Photographs captured by Edmund Sumner

Source

‘Nervous of its own boldness’: the (almost) radical rebirth of King’s Cross

Project

Cadence

03.2024

We’re thrilled announce that our award-winning higher education project is receiving critical acclaim on the North American Continent.

To read the full article, click here.

Project

Exeter College Cohen Quad

02.2024

Our first practice monograph is now available for purchase! We’re proud to be collaborating with leading architectural publisher, TC Cuadernos, on their first monograph of a woman-led practice.

“The work of Alison Brooks Architects fuses an endlessly inventive architectural imagination with profound sensitivity to the diverse cultural and natural histories that form each project’s provenance. This ethos underpins the extraordinary array of nuanced and joyful works illustrated in this book, collectively described by Alison Brooks as ‘experimental archetypes’. This 386-page monograph charts eighteen built works completed in the past 20 years, extensively documented with descriptive texts, photographs, drawings and emblematic construction details that illuminate each project’s tectonic and conceptual intent.

The private houses in this book define Brooks’ early career and continue to be a test bed for experimentation. They illuminate her ability to conjure deeply human architectures of plasticity and informality. Organic geometries and expressive roof forms loosen cartesian boundaries to offer indeterminate spaces: these simultaneously act as a canvas for daily life, workplaces, or private art collections.

As the practice’s work has grown in scale, their urban housing schemes have been motivated by Brooks’ foundational belief that the architect’s duty to the city, and society, is to provide beautiful, sustainable, and accessible housing for all as a framework for individual and community well-being. This book reveals residential projects characterised by spatial generosity and a uniquely sculptural approach to form and material.

Alison Brooks Architects’ more recent educational and cultural projects emphasise architecture as a celebration of time, space, and light. Here Brooks interweaves spatial narratives with structural and material invention, exhibiting ever more sophisticated architectural languages and environments to engender new forms of social exchange.”

Order your copy here.