Consultations close on 1 December 2008 on detailed plans submitted for Building R2. Sainsbury’s is envisaged as occupying most of the building for its headquarters. The Development Control Committee meeting to consider this application is on 15 January 2009. Comments need to be submitted some weeks before if they are to be considered in the report by the planning officers.
The Planning Response Team of the Forum has looked at the details submitted by the developer and has prepared comments which Forum members may want to use if they decide to make any representations about the application. The comments are here.
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King's Cross Development Forum 
Couldn’t agree more. It looks like a 1970’s Social Security building. What is the point of redevelopment if we end up with eyesores like this. What will it contribute to the area? It should be built where it belongs – an industrial estate beside a ring road, certainly not on a prestige inner city site. This is the kind of thing which makes you despair of so-called ‘planners’, architects and the whole sorry system. No doubt Sainsbury’s are looking for as many sweeteners as possible, whilst offering as little as possible to the environment or the surroundings of people who actually live there. Shameful.
This has got to be one of the most unimaginative designs I have seen. This is a brownfield development, there are few constraints imposed, yet the overall impression if of 60’s or 70’s office development, albeit incorporating some “green” initiatives to bring it into the 21st century (although I could not see any cycle lanes in the proposal).
Stunningly conservative and in no way is this a building of any architectural merit. Look around the UK and Europe and see some of the exciting new buildings and then ask why Kings Cross is being lumbered with such a drab, dull development.