'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,' is one of Oscar Wilde's most quoted aphorisms, alluding as it does to the age-old fascination with Earth and the heavens. In a way this is what one of his contemporaries, engineer William Barlow, was doing with physical structure for the train shed at St Pancras, with its huge soaring arch tied to the floor beneath. For the design team charged with refurbishment of the station, an understanding of the complex interrelationship and the tensional forces at play between the two was fundamental to the realisation of their new floor plan.
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