Design Anthology - Asia Pacific Edition
Cultural Centre
In London’s King’s Cross, the new ten-storey Aga Khan Centre, designed by Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki, provides a series of much-needed green spaces that reflect Islamic culture and architecture
The urban landscape of London’s King’s Cross has been transformed over recent years by an extraordinary collective of world-class architects and designers. There’s Wilkinson Eyre’s Gasholders residential project and Thomas Heatherwick’s new Coal Drops Yard project, as well as buildings by David Chipperfield, Niall McLaughlin and others. One of the most intriguing new buildings in the ‘campus’ is the new Aga Khan Centre by Japanese architects Maki and Associates. Here, at last, Fumihiko Maki and his patrons seek to address one of the weaknesses of the quarter: its lack of contemplative green spaces.
His Highness the Aga Khan placed the idea of an integrated series of gardens at the heart of his brief for this multifunctional new building, which houses The Institute of Ismaili Studies, the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and the London offices of the Aga Khan Foundation. ‘Taken together, this winding ribbon of special spaces is an eloquent tribute to the diversity of the Muslim world,’ said the Aga Khan at the opening of the new building.
Each of the gardens and terraces serves a different portion of the ten-storey building, while taking inspiration from a broad spectrum of Islamic gardens from across the world. Some are formal and architectural, others softer and more organic, still others sculptural and expressive. Together, they blur the boundaries between inside and outside space as the visitor travels upward and through the building. ‘It’s a very modern building, but in various ways there’s also a melding of Islamic architecture and certain traditions of London’s architecture,’ says Gary Kamemoto, a director of Maki and Associates. ‘We have modernity on the outside but hints of Islamic culture on the inside, seen in some of the geometric patterns that we’ve used, and then every area of the programme has a garden associated with it. On every facade you see an indentation that has been cut into it — that’s how we created the six gardens in the building itself.’
The Pritzker Prize-winning Fumihiko Maki, who also designed the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, has valuable experience in weaving outdoor spaces into his work, recognising the importance of such zones within the urban fabric. At the same time, one of the priorities of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture has been restoring public parks and gardens in different parts of the world, including Al-Azhar Park in Cairo, known as the city’s ‘green lung’. The new Aga Khan Centre represents a coming together of these preoccupations within a fresh kind of exemplar for a new kind of urban garden tower.
The limestone-faced building features a soaring central atrium at its heart, which forms an open courtyard with all of the key academic, library and office spaces radiating around it. Of the six integrated gardens in the building itself, the Garden of Tranquility is a particular delight, offering a terrace — complete with a central fountain — overlooking what will become a new garden square known as Jellicoe Gardens, which is being designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
The Garden of Light on the top floor, designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz, is a magical Andalusian-inspired courtyard space sheltered by patterned white screens and planted with trees. In contrast, Madison Cox’s Garden of Life, also on the top floor, is a communal refuge inspired by Mughal gardens, with textural, sensual planting, integrated seating and a pivotal water feature.
Partially open to the public, and to students, the Aga Khan Centre fuses many influences but — most importantly — introduces light, air, water and plants within a rich range of outdoor rooms that become all-important in a dense urban setting like King’s Cross.
‘We certainly see the building as a place that reflects the diversity of the traditions of the Muslim world, as well as core features of Islamic architecture with its use of gardens as places of contemplation and congregation, along with the necessity of such spaces for creative work and well-being,’ says Matt Reed, chief executive of the Aga Khan Foundation UK. ‘When you’re in a space like the Garden of Light, with the fountain trickling, you’re transported somewhere else entirely for a moment.’