CONTEXT

摘要

One of the most symbolic London buildings of the last decade or so is New Hall in Caledonian Road, a student hall of residence. It came to public notice for its retention of the facade of a mid-Victorian warehouse; in order to force the flats through planning, the building had to remain on the site, in some form, no matter how much the zoning and make-up of the area had transformed since the warehouse was built in 1874. The building type, with its iron frames and large spaces, has after all lent itself to adaptive reuse for luxury apartments. Of late, this has devolved into what you can see there now - a facade held up with a steel frame like a trophy, with system-built student flats beneath, an image of the inadvertent comedy of 'context'.