In one of those strange accidents of fate (or possibly it was programmed, what do I know?), the last few days have seen a positive rash of new station openings in London. Here's a quick jog around three, starting with the new South Bank station at Blackfriars:
This is a delightful station (really it's a new entrance to an existing station), a Modernist egg laid next to the ancient railway bridge that stretches over the Thames. New stairways have been cantilevered out to enable passengers to reach the platforms that soar above:
Inside, all the beautiful Victorian brick has been cleaned and neatly integrated into the structure:
You emerge onto the platforms. The new overall roof is clearly unfinished and is, for my taste, a little low (probably a planning requirement to keep the bridge silhouette low) but at least they seem to have learned some of the lessons from the wretched extension at St Pancras since these platforms already feel flooded with daylight:
The next opening is a bit further up the line, at Farringdon. Here a simple but rather lovely overall roof has been placed over most of the previously uncovered part of the station (at this point it is a four track affair, with Underground tracks to the right, and Thameslink tracks to the left):
A new side entrance on Turnmill Street has opened, again lovely original brick sensitively cleaned and made into a feature:
The new main entrance to the Thameslink platforms, on Cowcross Street, is simply vast, a reflection of the huge volumes of people who now use this previously unloved through-route:
You reach the platforms down wide, open stairs, all glass and vistas and natural daylight:
And above your head, rather elegantly engineered footbridges criss-cross the space:
Farringdon is not yet finished, not by a long way, but it is already obvious that it will be a rather elegant crossroads for the two major new cross-London railway lines.
A little further north, West Hampstead Thameslink
is finished:
This is a relatively unimportant station serving a local community, but it's been designed as a rather elegant Miesian box:
There is little here that is superfluous, but it uses the best traditions of London railway architecture to great effect -- notice that lime-green wall of tiles to the right, that stretches out and becomes a full-height back-wall inside the station:
It continues in a loooong wall outside, to the end of the road, a homage to Frank Lloyd Wright, maybe, but the colourful tiles also serve to drag your eye from the main road to the station, the traditional vivid colours being absolutely appropriate for a London railway station:
From the back, the station looks simple and classy, the back of the tiled wall here just a gentle cream horizontal, paired with the horizontal greys of the footbridges and lifts.
For me, some modern station architecture is simply too drab (the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras are particularly sterile spaces), but some of these new stations show great promise. Fingers crossed.
To finish, and in contrast with the new West Hampstead Thameslink here's how exactly the same sort of station type was built by the Victorians -- just around the corner, West Hampstead Overground:
The station entrance is obviously a "public building", but it's relatively tiny. And from the platforms below, the modest scale of the whole structure can clearly be seen:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, maybe those pioneers just couldn't see the sheer volumes of people that would ultimately use their railways.
