In one form or another, King’s Cross has been a multi-sensory adventure zone for Londoners for hundreds of years.

Be that the bucolic babbling of the pre-industrial River Fleet, the all-out assault of noise, steam and heavy, fish and coal-scented rolling stock in the Victorian railway yard boom, or the mind-expanding music, crowds and chemical enhancements of its nightlife years.

Nowdays, it’s the permanent and pop-up public art installations that really tweak the synapses, offering an ever-changing backdrop to any casual KX visit, or reason enough to embark upon a dedicated trip there.

And so it came to pass that I sat for coffee and pastries at Caravan with French artist Delphine Dénéréaz bright and early one morning last week. She’s the latest practitioner to be invited to create work specifically for one of the estate’s event programmes.

The resulting piece, Dandelions Always Return, celebrates a medieval weaving technique that’s rooted in fabric reuse, which Delphine has crafted into a joyful little house, offering very bold colours and environmental messages (it also arrived here on Earth Day) alongside the cosy playhouse domesticity.

It’s a key part of this springtime’s Super Nature season, which offers a regular events programme, low-impact shopping and eating options and free activities (including a guided family nature trail) running throughout May.

Dénéréaz chose Dandelions to represent the way that a simple plant (and a vital pollinator, at that) has the ability, no matter how much we may have paved over or polluted the land is emerges from, to crop up regardless.

During our chat, the house - which is set atop Granary Square’s equally colourful and popular summertime sprouting of the ‘grassy’ suntrap steps - draws loads of comments, particularly from the chattering infant school group passing by on their way to swimming. It’s messages of careful textile reuse and engagement with the natural world effortlessly serving their purpose; a momentary reflective pause from the urban hustle and the pinging notifications of the rest of our day as adults, too. It’s enchanting.

“It grew from my fascination with how textiles carry memory, with each knot and each thread holding traces of the past,” says Delphine. “The dandelion mirrors this for me: it scatters, disappears, and always resurfaces.”

Also on the theme of memories evoked by visual cues connecting us with our past, I received an email about a unique building that’s stood nearby for over 30 years. It’s one that I bet many locals have never really taken the time to pause over, despite it looking quite unlike all around it.

Below, local architect, activist and Queen’s Crescent Market champion, Tom Young, delights in finally being let inside to have a look…

➡️ More public art to see around King’s Cross

The dreams of an architect belong to the time and place she finds herself in.

In my 30s, mine were about a creative home in a quasi-industrial building. I was responding to something in the air in the early 90s when the notion of live-work was bandied about.

In Shoreditch for instance, it seemed to be a way to lessen the tension between an old-style defined employment area prioritising jobs for inhabitants of local housing estates, and the newer Yuppie demand for living space in 19th-century warehouses.

Architecture records old convictions that might reconnect us to a meaningful life. For more than two decades, I have passed by a building at 115 Bartholomew Road in Kentish Town. It has always seemed to me that it must be the product of an association of creatives who had fulfilled my old dream.

The other day I met someone from the group who drew up the plan to build 115 back in the mid-90s, when it was first conceived as a complex of two live/work units and one workspace. They invited me to look around their building.

There are two entries. One takes you from the street into an airy hall nicknamed ‘the atrium’, the other leads into the front garden where cyclists can leave bikes before entering through a side door.

The atrium is the main architectural space; half of it is three storeys high and enclosed by a steel frame infilled with u-shaped translucent Reglit glazing. This crystalline, industrial lantern is the building’s public signature.

The main stair is an assembly of thick timber treads and white steel structure which climbs up the atrium walls and terminates on a landing high above the entrance, where the top floor consists of a single, long office that spans between the street and the back gardens behind the building. The ground floor includes a workshop (occupied by a joinery business) with openings onto both gardens. All six workspaces are distinct.

Next to the street entrance is a shared kitchen and eating area. Typologically, 115 is a house, not the terraced sort but more like a Victorian villa with rooms off a celebratory stairhall.

It is enriched with witty details expressing creative commitments. These include, along with the Reglit glazing, doorway reveals from polished cut concrete blocks, plywood wall lining in the workspaces and screens across street-level openings formed of welded mesh panels set in galvanised steel frames.

Beyond the many enjoyable, industrial Modernist inflections and semi-traditional typology, 115’s meaning derives from its self-made aspect. Doing it yourself succeeded here, between 1995 and 2002, because a stable group of founders found and bought a site, reached design consensus, got a bank loan and constructed a building.

Since that time the building has hosted a stream of 50+ creatives working in joinery, architecture, script-writing, graphic design, software, music and other spheres. Three of the initial group of four founders are still here. Membership is controlled to ensure the building remains a haven for creatives committed to doing "good work" that is "useful and delightful to others," environmentally aware, personally fulfilling, egalitarian, welcoming to apprentices or “assistants”, and concerned with detail.

The average length of membership is over 13 years, and my contact makes clear the importance of one of the founders, a publisher, who put up money to buy the site. I assume finance for construction was secured against land-value. 30 years on, members are now exploring ways to buy the freehold.

115 brings together themes of urban life: stability, creativity, independence, affordability, neighbourhood and genius loci. The site it stands on was a sawmill until the 1950s, then became a filo pastry factory before being sold as development land during the last stages of the de-industrialisation of London's backstreets in the late 90s.

Instead of becoming another expensive residential development to be repeatedly sold in order to cash-in on rising values, 115 has ensured continuity of productive activity on site.

The world which could have existed if more schemes like 115 had materialised since the 90s is a dream. Many neighbourhoods would be better if it had happened.

FESTIVAL: 🛥️ Ok, Little Venice isn’t in Camden, however it’s surprisingly quick to get to on foot if you walk via Regent’s Canal towpath (certainly beating the bus or tube most days, if you walk at a decent clip). And the area’s biggest weekend of the year is upon us, as the Inland Waterways Association’s famous free Carnival Cavalcade brings loads of boats, food, drink and art together from Sat 2nd - Mon 4th May, with the lovely illuminated boat procession taking place on Sunday night.

FOOD: 🍾 St Paul’s longstanding rooftop cocktail and dining institution, Sabine, has just taken over the NYX Hotel rooftop in the centre of Holborn, bringing the same mix of sharing plates, impressive drinks list and lively DJ-infused party nights, set to a twinkling urban panorama from the hotel’s 10th floor and terrace.

CABARET: 🌞 The Black Cap is well and truly back on the local night time venue circuit with a programme of drag shows, quizzes and outrageous performances to check out, following its eagerly-awaited reopening after an 11-year battle. And, just in time for the bank holiday weekend, it’s roof terrace, aka the Regina Roof Terrace, also reopens on Sat 2nd May. It’s named in memory of the late, great drag artist, Regina Fong, or Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess, and features a restored blue plaque in her honour.

FESTIVAL: 🐐 If you love a local goat encounter, or squeal with delight at the sight of an urban pig, the annual May Day Fair returns this Mon 4th May at Kentish Town City Farm, for an afternoon of music, maypole dancing, games, arts and animals. Oink, oink!

STAGE: 🎷 The challenges of being British, Iranian, and a Hip-Hop head collide in I’m Muslamic Don’t Panik where our storyteller, Bobak, invites us to join him on a physical, musical and emotional journey to accept his own heritage, set against a media culture which still portrays the Middle East as a frightening and dangerous place. See it at Camden’s People’s Theatre until Sat 2nd May.

FESTIVAL: ✍🏼 Down at Fleet Street Quarter you’ll find a stream of top notch speakers from the worlds of journalism, books, podcasting and politics taking to the stage from Thurs 7th May at the Festival of Words. Subtitled ‘The Age of Wisdom and Foolishness’, 40 different talks and events look at where we’ve collectively gone wrong, and what on earth happens next.

COMEDY: 🎭 Dirty Minds sees comedian Kayvan Khazaee unleash what he says will be his dirtiest material as part of a shamelessly honest deep dive into his chaotic life on Sun 3rd May at Aces & Eights. So expect dark gags, gleeful filth, and emotional vulnerability.

MUSIC: 💀 I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Metal, but if I did, I’d be spending Sat 2nd May getting thoroughly stuck in from lunchtime until the early hours at Incineration Festival 2026, which bring deliciously name bands like Blood Fire Death, Hypocrisy, Internal Bleeding, Vacuous and Beyond Extinction to five Camden Town venues, with one wristband valid at Roundhouse, Electric Ballroom, Underworld, The Black Heart and The Dev.

FESTIVAL: 🍜 If you like Korean food but want to go deeper into the country’s dynamic food culture, London’s first Jung Festival is bringing 30+ traders serving all kinds of skewers, kimchi, fried chicken and beautiful desserts at King’s Cross Canopy Market, while inside UAL at The Crossing, there’s a dedicated cultural zone featuring fashion, accessories, art workshops, traditional Korean games and a range of craft and design pieces.
Runs from today, Fri 1st - Mon 4th May.