The Standard Hotel, King's Cross, London

摘要

When tourists come to London they expect grey: drizzly skies and Trafalgar Square pigeons, mushy food and miserable faces. If everything was quite so monochromatic, they might not come at all. Luckily, they also think of the red: the routemasters and the postboxes, the Tower of London's beefeaters and the fluttering Union Tack. ORMS had plenty of grey to work with when it set about transforming a brutalist annexe to Camden Town Hall into a hotel. Situated opposite St Pancras and above the Euston Road, it is an uncompromising grid of oblong windows recessed into precast concrete. So naturally, ORMS decided to add a dash of red. Breaking the facade is a shiny new lift, whose deep carmine outshines even the passing 73 bus. Superficially, visitors use the bubble-like device to ascend to a new rooftop bar, but its real function is to connote a groovy London, the sort of city that attracts The Standard's clientele.