The Elizabeth line – ten bold new stations

Robinson worked with Roland Paoletti, chief architect on the Jubilee Line extension (JLE) project, completed in 1999. He shares Paoletti’s earlier vision of combining different design teams with a unifying thread and a strong ‘line-wide’ identity.

In Robinson’s own words, “The further you move towards the train the more common the environment becomes”. Grimshaw Architects were appointed to lead this aspect, forging a common identity with standardised architectural elements on platforms, concourses, escalators and in booking halls. 

The aesthetic of the common environment is inspired by its engineering: “it’s not lots of painted surfaces, its raw materials, concrete, reflecting the concrete structure behind”, says Robinson. Interiors are characterised by stunning tall, curved passages and corners, indirect lighting and the free-standing ‘totems’ that house speakers and power sockets, as well as signage.

On the platforms, floor-to-ceiling barriers convey high-tech live train information, as well as keeping passengers safe and draughts out. 

Designed by Weston Williamson & Partners, the Elizabeth line station at Paddington replicates the grid pattern of Brunel’s pioneering main line station next door, allowing natural light down to platform level via a 120-metre glass and steel canopy.

The glazed roof is printed with an image of a cloudy sky by American artist Spencer Finch.

The new Bond Street station, designed by John McAslan & Partners, has two new booking halls: one with a red sandstone entrance on fashionable Davies Street, and a second leading to a new courtyard on Hanover Square through a grand Portland stone colonnade. Bronze panels above the 60-metre escalators add a decorative detail, but they are also functional, helping to absorb noise. 

The station at Tottenham Court Road, designed by Hawkins/Brown, was the first Crossrail station building to open, in 2017. As a major gateway to the delights of the West End, it serves shoppers, theatre-goers and Soho clubbers as well as commuters. The main entrance on Charing Cross Road by Centre Point is bright and well-lit, with a booking hall six times the size of its predecessor and a colourful artwork by Daniel Buren. The new Soho entrance incorporates dramatic black metal and stainless steel downlighting. The office and housing development above incorporates the West End’s first new theatre for over 50 years.

At Farringdon the Elizabeth line links to Thameslink, an earlier cross-London railway that has been recently upgraded, and to the world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan. The new Thameslink booking hall, completed in 2011, was built with the Crossrail project in mind, and a new entrance to the Underground was also added to increase capacity in advance. 

The two new access points to the Elizabeth line were designed by international architecture firm Aedas. The main Farringdon entrance is expected to handle 80% of passengers. In the new booking hall, large pre-cast concrete ceiling sections are arranged in a diamond pattern that continues on the walls, referencing the jewellery trade in nearby Hatton Garden. At the Barbican end, the large corner entrances echo the concrete brutalism of the Barbican estate, with flooring made from City of London paving stones extending out onto a new pedestrian plaza.  
 

The maze of pre-existing Tube lines, sewers and archaeological sites under Liverpool Street made WilkinsonEyre’s Elizabeth line station a major challenge. The new entrances at Broadgate, next to the National Rail station, and at Moorgate, share a striking geometric motif of grooved angles on their high ceilings, sparkling with mica. Robinson calls this ‘a modernistic take on art deco’, while others see a visual reference to the traditional pinstriped suits of City workers.

The new station at Whitechapel was a hugely ambitious project that took more than nine years to complete, while a temporary station allowed Underground and London Overground services to continue as normal. Designed by the international studio BDP to fit seamlessly into its surroundings, it sits on a bridge over the pre-existing lines. 

The raised concourse has a timber ceiling and a ‘green roof’ supported off the Overground arches on narrow steel struts, allowing daylight down to its platforms. The concrete linings of the escalator shaft down to the Elizabeth line are decorated with idealised sound waves referencing the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which operated nearby for 250 years, closing in 2017. The original Victorian District Railway station frontage has been refurbished with a widened stone-paved forecourt.
 

The Elizabeth line Canary Wharf station incorporates an ‘oversite’ commercial development, like those at Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street, but in this case the construction is more horizontal than vertical, and mostly below ground, within the West India North Dock. 

Canary Wharf Group contributed 30% of the total £500m cost, to deliver a four-storey retail development above the Elizabeth line booking hall and platform levels 28 metres down. Known as Crossrail Place, it opened in 2015, with more than 9,000 square metres of retail space. The structure is topped by a public roof garden encased within a complex 310-metre long timber lattice roof, designed by Foster and Partners to evoke a ship laden with unusual and exotic specimens from around the world. 
 

Although it is above ground, Custom House station in the Royal Docks had space constraints as severe as any of the central area stations. Built on a narrow strip of land with power cables overhead, architects Allies and Morrison designed the building, inspired by the temples of Ancient Greece, like a full-scale model kit, from thousands of pre-cast concrete beams and pillars. The solidity of the concrete contrasts with the more delicate translucent canopy above its elevated concourse. 

Woolwich station was not part of the earlier planning for Crossrail, but was added in 2007, and part-funded by Berkeley Homes to support their Royal Arsenal Riverside housing development. Designed by Weston Williamson, the same architectural team as Paddington, the surface building’s broad concrete framed portal is closer to Charles Holden’s classic Underground stations of the 1930s than any other Elizabeth line station. The area’s military heritage is referenced on the bronze plate cladding of the supporting columns at platform level, decorated with regimental colours.  

At the Elizabeth line terminus Abbey Wood, shared with National Rail, the designers Fereday Pollard worked with landscape architects and the boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley to create a new civic focus, and a ‘proper station’ for the area, first served by the South Eastern Railway in 1849. The new station opened in 2017, and is built over the railway track, providing a granite-paved concourse and step-free access to bus services on the dual carriageway above, framed inside with laminated larch beams.