The St. Pancras International bookworm infestation sensation

What better gift than a book for Christmas? How about 3,800?

Over the years we've designed and built lots of giant Christmas ‘trees’ for St Pancras and their sponsors. Themes have been set by the likes of Cirque du Soleil, Disney, Fortnum & Mason and London Zoo. In 2023, Hatchards bookstore gave us a novel challenge. And as soon as we opened the brief, we couldn’t put it down.

Six storeys of stories

Huge – both in ambition and stature; at 12 metres, this was going to be the UK’s tallest indoor ‘tree’ (sorry, we keep using inverted commas because, well, have you seen it? It’s more like a whopping great vertical library). The ‘tree’ was aimed at anyone who loves books, and they fell for it in their thousands.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Spiralling almost to the ceiling of the station concourse, the ‘tree’ coaxed visitors in with eight cosy listening booths. While they waited for the 17.05 to wherever, they could snuggle up with snippets from a choice of 16 Penguin audiobooks. 'The Snowman', ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’, 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'… and of course, ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Craft, tech and a good book

Grand designs? This one quickly went from ambitious to epic. But no matter how carried away we got with the plans, nothing fazed the carpentry crew. Their mantra – “You want big, we’ll give you big”.

We started with steelwork from a previous Christmas tree frame (big up the sustainability posse). Then we built an enormous multi-tiered, spiral helix library around it, with staircases, bookcases and integrated lighting. And then we filled it with 3,800 books, all hand-painted with the team’s favourite titles.

Listening booths on the lower floor were fitted with plush seating and hidden speakers. Each booth featured push buttons linked to QLab software that triggered clips from the 16 featured books.

This towering literary wonderland attracted squillions of visitors. It got a ton of media coverage, 3million+ hits on social media and more Insta snaps than you could shake a book at.