Cadence Court: a red-brick block of 163 homes rises in King's Cross
A new red-brick apartment block in King's Cross, London, is now finished, and its architect says the colour was chosen with a nearby railway landmark in mind.
The building is called Cadence Court. It was designed by Alison Brooks Architects, and it holds 163 apartments. Dezeen reported the details on 2 November 2026. Alison Brooks told the magazine that the red-brick exterior pays homage to St Pancras Station, the Victorian station a short walk away.
King's Cross is a district in north central London that is being rebuilt in stages. Cadence Court sits within the King's Cross Central Masterplan, a long-running plan to redevelop a large area of the city. The architects' own project page describes the masterplan as one of Europe's largest urban regeneration projects, which means the rebuilding of older or unused city land. Cadence Court sits at the northern end of Lewis Cubitt Park, and it defines the northern edge of the wider scheme.
The block is five-sided, with two towers. One rises 12 storeys and the other 16. Its entrances are framed by arches two storeys tall. From the upper floors, residents can look south over Coal Drops Yard, a shopping and dining area designed by Heatherwick Studio.
The heart of the building is an open-air courtyard. A reflecting pool sits in the middle, with sheltered walkways running around it. The first two floors hold 633 square metres of commercial and social space. That includes a community living room that opens onto the courtyard at ground level.
Much of the building was made away from the site. Dezeen reports that 85 per cent of its components were prefabricated off-site, using a method known as Design for Manufacture and Assembly, in which parts are made in a factory and then fitted together on location. Shorter build times and fewer weather delays are the usual reasons builders choose the approach.
The interiors were designed by Conran and Partners, according to the King's Cross development's own website. The project has also won an award. The architects say Cadence in King's Cross took the SFE Project of the Year prize in the New Build (UK) category, a win they announced on 5 November 2025.
For the people who will live there, the practical picture is a courtyard they can walk into, a shared room at street level, and apartments in a block that sits at the edge of a park. For the neighbourhood, it adds a large set of homes and ground-floor space to an area that has been changing for more than two decades.
