oal Drops Yard is a diamond
in the rough: the prize jewel in
the King's Cross Central
development, t he crowning
achievement of a multi-billion pound
regeneration scheme that has parasitically
emerged from the husk of London's vast
derelict railworks. The project is a kind
ofindustrial-themed strip mall, poorly
disguised as a bustling local marketplace.
Its wide open spaces are peppered with
ersatz independent businesses, each
housed in a vintage vehicle: coffee is served
from a 1960s Airstream caravan, Aperol
and crepes come from a 1950s Citroen van,
flowers are sold from the bucket of a Dutch
bicycle. There is a sanitised vibrance -
where 'carefully curated' is a bourgeois dog
whistle for class-conscious homogen eity.
The concessions are an even mix of chains
and 'concept' stores from Aesop to Nilte,
Tom Dixon to Sweaty Betty, and Barrafina
to The Community Store. The offering
includes some unexpected shops, such as
Facegym, 'the first ever gym studio for
your face', but the concrete need for this
concept remains unclear.
Coal Drops Yard was designed by Thomas
Heatherwick, a man who has come to
specialise in occupying that uncomfortable
junction between culture and commerce
in a variety of uncomfortable ways (from
New York's canned Pier 55 to his Escher-
like Vessel at Hudson Yards, or the ill-fated
Garden Bridge in London). That said,
Heatherwick has done a fine job here.
The plan is uninspiring (it is a mall,
after all), but there are some nice, formal
gestures, and t he quality of the detailing
(both design and fabrication) is unusually
high for London. The planting and
landscaping softens t he brown brick
considerably; a wildflower and native-grass
meadow unfolds between cascading dining
terraces and the sparkling canal. But t he
perverse attraction of Coal Drops Yard has
little to do with its design and everything
to do with its aesthetic, its cultural
programming, its marketing language
and its proposition about what (and who)
the contemporary city is actually for.
The driving ambition is to present
a quarter filled with 'authentic experien ces'
(their words). Authenticity is 'realness',
and not the same as reality- it is an elusive
feeling that rolls moral righteousness into
apparent spontaneity. At a time when the
individual is constantly being manipulated
and exploited by political and economic
agents, authenticity is supposed to be
liberating. To feel authentic, we want
to think we are supporting hard-·working,
deserving, ethical and entrepreneurial
creators in a free-market environment that
has not been designed from above but has
emerged as a consequence of gradual,
resilient commerce. It's quite postmodern
in that sense. Unsurprisingly, the aesthetic
of Coal Drops Yard draws heavily on the
identity of European provincial cities
(themselves perceived as modern-day
evolut ions of medieval marketplaces).
The language deployed by the
development to describe itself confirms
this as true, and the project website says:
'Coal Drops Yard is challenging t h e trend
of faceless, endless, mass supply and
demand by r edefining what "consumption"
means. Because to consume something
fully, you must be fully engaged in the
experience. And t he experience is
everything.' In this 'place where art,
commerce and culture come together ...
we offer an experien ce that's out of t he
ordinary, that goes beyond being a place
to buy'. This insultingly disingenuous text
couches anti-capitalist rhetoric in vaguely
managerial terms, and continues t he fine
marketing tradition of using emotionally
manipulative corporate manifestos as
advertising points of difference.
You'd be forgiven for thinking this style
is as old as capitalism itself. In fact, the
origin of the genre can be dated to the
mid-1990s, some time before Apple's 1997
Think Different campaign but after Pret
a Manger's 1995 restructuring (although
not the only companies to adopt corporate
manifestos, they were the most successful).
Apple's infamous ad copy ran: 'Here's to
the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round pegs in
the square holes. The ones vvho see things
differently. They're not fond of rules ... And
while some may see t hem as the crazy ones,
we see genius. Because the people who are
crazy enough to think they can change the
world, are the ones who do.' Today it rings
hollow, but back t hen it did hit home.
In 1995, Pret a Manger launched
a radically nevv type of campaign that
focused on the moral superiority of t he
company itself, rather than how its product
was superior to that of its competitors.
Pret championed 'natural' ingTedients and
the donation of unsold stock to charities.
Its crusade against additive 'nasties' tells
us little about the quality of its sandwiches,
and everything about the fads and neuroses
of the market segment it hoped to tap.
Gone was industry - we were all becoming
'creatives' and immaterial ·workers,
struggling in competition against each
other to attain ultimate self-actualisation.
Solution: help yourself out of precarity,
and buy an Apple laptop. Gone too was
social welfare and the nanny state - we
could no longer rely on governments to
take responsibility for things such as
climate change or poverty, let alone care
for us if we were to get sick. Solution:
do your bit, and go and buy an ethical
sand\vich or an organic smoothie.
The Coal Drops Yard text tries to buildThe refurbishment of
antiquated structures
fallen into disrepair - such
as the two Victorian sheds
at Coal Drops Yard
(below)-is particularly
appealing to developers
who covet the aesthetic
authenticity of old brick
structures