Global Generation opens permanent community garden in King's Cross

Across all the buildings, construction waste makes up 30% of materials out of surplus from adjacent sites destined for the tip, whether windows, floorboards and stones. Bio-based materials made up 60% including clay excavated nearby.

But it’s not just about sustainable materials – “This is what regenerative practice is. It’s not enough to just reduce our impact, we need to start healing social and environmental damage,” says Kattein “That’s what the Triangle Site does and that’s what the built environment can do if we do things differently.”

Section 106 ‘obligations’ are a mechanism for local authorities to secure benefits from developers to offset the impact of new development. How often are they as long-term, visionary and regenerative, as this one? The Story Gardens champions long term change and community led stewardship, with a 999-year lease for Global Generation – both novel and essential to making this possible.

The team learned as they went along (Global Generation, Jan Kattein Architects and Kings Cross Group) creating new roles as needed throughout the process to enable work to continue, such as ‘Community Build Manager’ which combines architecture, building and community engagement.

This garden follows in the footsteps of Global Generation and Jan Kattein’s previous, temporary gardens: the Skip Garden, the Floating Garden, the Paper Garden and the Story Garden behind the British Library. This garden as a permanent site is in a way, the culmination.  

Each time the process adapts, with more people drawn in. It’s not just what’s created but what it sets in motion, as Kattein says: “Architects don’t create a thing. They create networks, relationships, inspiration. They sow seeds for something that comes after.”

“We have 3,000 volunteers who are ambassadors for a building practice that is in tune with nature – many of them are architects, engineers, developers, project managers and consultants who are in the business of making decisions about buildings. With their hindsight, they can now authoritatively speak about another way of making cities,” Kattein says.

An on-site natural build and heritage craft training programme also trained 12 young people on the live construction site.

“We have living proof that we can genuinely build solid and beautiful buildings with earth, with wood and with reclaimed windows and flooring and that all those slight mismatches, misalignments and misfits actually tell the stories of the origin of these materials and how they were put together.”

The change that has been sown here is building action, action through building. The idea was first seeded in 2019 – before Covid, before the scale of climate change we now see. Helping people come together and co-create with their own hands in a world that increasingly feels out of our hands.

Future textbooks of architecture might look back at this time and show that this small project is the antidote that matters. In size and stature, the triangular site may be the David to Kings Cross’ Goliath, but its seeds may grow taller and spread further than its neighbours.

Poem by Brenn – one of 12 Global Generation Build Trainees who worked on the site

Where we find ourselves may be our garden now

Though let us not forget that at first this place was a dream, a vision left unseen by all eyes but our own.

Now look at what we’ve grown. Buds have burst, all seeds dispersed.

It can only get greener from here.

Our triangular haven has finally been realised so let us celebrate!

Here’s to the trees, to their fruit and fallen leaves.

Here’s to pollinators, interweaving shared beliefs. 

Here’s to many summers, autumns, winters and springs too.

And here’s to you, to each all of you, every one.

Find out more Welcome to the New Story Garden launch event is on July 18. Read about participatory building and listen to The Developer Podcast interview with Jan Kattein