The design vision for Farringdon station is passenger focused but in addition it it celebrates
the industrial heritage of metalworking, jewellerey making and fine metal works
that was prevalent in the Farringdon, Smithfield and Clerkenwell area of London in order to look at
the local elements that define the design one has to take a step back the challenge that Crossrail
set was for the platform area to have a common theme so that when you go from one station to the
other the same theme recalls however when you come up above ground the objective is to have something
of a local area expressed in the ticket halls some of the influences in the eastern ticket hall
includes the adjoining Barbican estate with its concrete and its brutallist style architecture and
the nearby Smithfield market in the west ticket hall those design influences include the diamond
which is a primary commodity in the area the London's diamond district just up the road
the key challenge for us in designing the two ticket halls is intuitive wayfinding
in the west ticket hall this was achieved using concept if you want like exaggerated perspective
an interplay of natural and artificial lighting the adjoining pre-existing Thameslink ticket hall
is top lit with daylight whereas the interchange bits that we designed
sits right underneath the building so it became therefore necessary to make some effort
in ensuring that the artificial lighting is counterbalanced by the natural light
and then as people walk through what we try to do is to ensure that you could see the next
objective usually it's the next escalator taking you onward in your journey all moving through
the space without needing to rely on signage so signage just becomes something that assures rather
than informs in the eastern ticket hall again there's a play with lighting the eastern ticket
hall unlike the west enjoys a lot of daylight even on a gray day there is still a lot of daylight the
eastern ticket all also makes use of perspective in the coffered ceiling so drawing one's eye
in it's got a very small footprint and you can easily see where the next objective is
the two ceilings are part of an environment and within that environment we had to ensure that we
made the accessibility to services technical elements in the station and many other
components as accessible as possible to the maintainer which then freed up
an opportunity for the designer for us to express the architecture and engineering
in the ceiling the western ticket hall has a sloping ceiling with diamond shaped elements on it
we didn't simply overlay these diamond shapes just because the Hatton Garden is up the road if one
were to look at the alignment of the Thameslink and look at the alignment of Elizabeth line
and then play with the geometry mirroring lines and so on we end up with a trapezoidal shape
the ability to then overlay a diamond motif on that became natural rather than something that was
simply plastered on we sloped the soffit to manage the scale from the street level ticket hall and
passenger experience down to the escalator portal leading down to the platform so the raking soffit
does help us manage the scale the materials we used in the ticket halls varied ever so slightly
the common ones though champagne coloured stainless steel which generally was used to
house or disguise acoustic absorbent material we use concrete for the ceilings themselves
in the west ticket hall we've got what we call the upper apse and the lower apse
in the upper apse we've got precast concrete units
we've got a hybrid of precast and in-situ concrete in the lower apse this is the zone just before the
escalators and we've got terrazzo or rather shall I say granatzo flooring which is common everywhere
in the east ticket hall we have yorkstone paving on the flooring
because the objective of the east ticket hall is to have it as open as possible almost an
extension of the external area so we've brought in yorkstone paving which is the commonly used
paving stone of the City of London at Farringdon station we've got London Underground we've got
the Thameslink services and we now have the Elizabeth line the interchange with the Thameslink
is integral to the design of the west ticket hall in that we unzipped a pre-existing wall
and introduced stairs and escalators to allow both the Elizabeth line and Thameslink passengers to
interchange the public realm features paving seats as appropriate benches landscaping bike stands
and bollards keeping people safe the objective being that the public realm becomes part of the
journey into the station or for arriving passengers part of the onward experience as they
leave the station in addition to that the public realm features Legible London signs making it easy
for people to get to not just the other station entrance but to their other objectives around the
area over the eastern ticket hall and the western ticket hall there are both office buildings
the OSD in each case completes the station so we don't end up with a lump of concrete if you want
defining the end of the station with nothing above it the public realm contributes to the perception
of safety as people arrive at the station or approach this station depending on whether they
are coming or going specifically starting with the east ticket hall the OSD features coloured
cladding elements which if you walk round the block in an anti-clockwise fashion you see
a colouring system on the southern end which faces on to Charterhouse Square lots of greens
there and then blues and other colour where the building faces the market building the western
ticket hall OSD does similar in that along the pedestrianized Cowcross Street they make use of
a lot of deep purple which is a collar picked up from the heritage London Underground station
we've seen trains arrive and stop as part of the Trial Operations we've seen the doors
between the station and the train open in sync but the station won't come to life until we
get the passengers when people start to enter the station that's when life gets
into the station and that's really what i'm looking forward to when the system comes alive