Kingly Court

Kingly Court is a popular courtyard shopping and restaurant development in the heart of London’s West End originally designed by MRP in 2003. Previously a timber warehouse arranged around a quiet paved mews, the building has seen various uses over the last century as offices, workshops and light industrial units and is currently a thriving restaurant destination. The temporary roof structure designed by MRP in 2005 gives great flexibility in the use of the court for outside dining and year-round events.

The brief was to produce a temporary lightweight roof structure that can be easily erected, dismantled and stored.

The design solution includes the following features:

3 no. fabric cones manufactured from Tenara, a hi-tech material superior to the basic PVC fabric and with better daylighting characteristics.

2 no. aluminium tri-cord trusses spanning 10m across the court to stabilise and support the roof. The trusses are detailed in 3 sections to aid transport and handling during erection.

The conical fabric roof sections are held in their 4 corners to specially fabricated steel brackets mounted on a plate and bolted to the perimeter beam.

The fabric cones are tied down to their base assembly using paired vertical cables. The base connections are fixed below a cover plate in the paving and are therefore invisible.

Drainage of the roof is via a collection dish at the base of each cone and then via a spiral hose held between the paired tie-down cables. The hoses discharge below ground into new gulleys connected to the existing underground drainage system.

The roof solution is straightforward to erect or dismantle and retains the facility for each cone to be erected singly or in pairs as a partial cover.