Kings Place, designed by leading architects Dixon Jones, will open on 1 October 2008 with a special five-day festival of over 100 music concerts and art exhibitions to celebrate a new cultural space for London. Kings Place is a major new development which brings together world-class arts facilities, outstanding office accommodation and waterside bars, restaurants and event spaces. The innovative waterside building is only 150m from King’s Cross and the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link and is part of one of the largest urban regeneration projects in Europe.
The development includes London’s first concert hall to be built since the Barbican Concert Hall over 25 years ago in 1982, a 420-seat auditorium. Kings Place also offers a 200-seat flexible space for concerts and conferences, practice rooms, teaching rooms and rehearsal rooms. Spaces for the visual arts include two art galleries, Kings Place Gallery and Pangolin London, which is one of the UK’s largest sculpture spaces. Arup has worked with architects Dixon Jones, providing specialist acoustic consultancy and engineering services.
Kings Place will provide new offices for Guardian Newspapers Ltd as well as headquarters for two orchestras, the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Public facilities will include restaurants and bars by Green & Fortune as well as outstanding waterside spaces for conferences and private events.
The developers, Parabola Land, have established the Kings Place Music Foundation (KPMF) to manage and operate the music space and to carry out an ambitious outreach programme. Through its close relationships with local residents, schools and organisations, the programme will provide accessible music and arts to the local community. Outreach at Kings Place will be run by KPMF in association with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Royal Academy of Music, the King’s Place Sculpture Residency and Pangolin London.
http://www.kingsplace.co.uk
