UK: Crossrail goes with the flow

[John Ashworth]

Crossrail goes with the flow as London's mayor unveils designs for eight stations

British architects and engineers have shaped calm, elegant and free-flowing spaces for the capital's 2018 east-west rail link

* Jonathan Glancey
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 November 2010 14.47 GMT

Sudden demolitions. Unexpected views of central London opened up as if someone has taken a giant tin opener to the city's skyline. The disappearance of much loved venues, including the London Astoria on Charing Cross Road. Heated arguments over the compulsory purchase of properties along the route. A fear, even, that anthrax and bubonic plague might be released from mass 16th-century graves under Smithfield.

These urban dramas and revelations prove that, at long last, Crossrail – the £16bn mainline railway linking far-flung east and west London suburbs through four miles of tunnels between Paddington and Farringdon – is finally on its metalled march.

Today, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and Theresa Villiers, the transport minister, unveiled the designs of the eight new stations that will serve Crossrail and its 200 million future passengers each year from 2018, on a service that promises a 10-coach, air-conditioned train every two and a half minutes. As Crossrail was first announced in 1989, passengers will have waited just 29 years for their first train to arrive.

The mayor, the minister, Crossrail and its owner, Transport for London, are determined that this bold new venture will be nothing less than impressive. And efficient. "As Crossrail moves from the drawing board to reality," said Johnson today at the New London Architecture gallery, "we can see the breathtaking benefits it will bring to our city, and I'm thrilled Londoners can finally see the designs of the world-class stations we will construct. When complete, they will run east to west in a solid backbone of quality infrastructure and style."

The style of the stations, by British architects and engineers with a solid track record – among them Norman Foster, Allies and Morrison and John McAslan – appears to be sober, robust and calmly elegant. Whether in the booking offices, concourses or platforms of Paddington, Tottenham Court Road or Farringdon, every effort appears to have been made to shape generous and free-flowing spaces designed to cope with future demand. The lessons of the high-quality Jubilee line extension between Westminster and Stratford have been learned. Flow is all.

The simple finishes of the stations – concrete, aluminium, steel, glass, recessed and diffused lighting, a minimal palette of colours – reflect a belief that these structure are engineering-led and designed for optimum efficiency. The architecture of each – drawing daylight from streets above wherever possible – is free from fashion or whimsy. The sheer number of passengers passing through these spacious stations will provide more than enough noise, people and colour.

Crossrail's computer-generated images, however, show the eight central stations peopled by just a few relaxed, nattily dressed travellers who look as if they might be boarding the Orient Express rather than a commuter train to Heathrow, Shenfield, Abbey Wood or Maidenhead.

"London has a glorious railway design history," said Villiers, "that ranges from the Brunel-designed Paddington station, through Charles Holden's Tube stations of the 1920s and 30s to the revival of St Pancras International. Crossrail intends to build on this design legacy and create cost-effective stations fit for the 21st century while regenerating local communities."

After so very long, Londoners will expect trains to run on time, allowing only, perhaps, for the wrong sort of disease – bubonic plague – if not the wrong strand of design on the line.