The design vision for Tottenham Court Road station was to create a station which is going to reflect
the character of the area that was set up within central London particularly for the western ticket
hall which is situated in Soho and the eastern ticket hall which is situated in St Giles
central London we want to differentiate them by color and also by materiality and that was really
done as a wayfinding device for passengers that were using the station what we wanted to use was
the regular grid of the streets within Soho that have been here for hundreds of years
to reflect some of the architectural elements within the station and in the western ticket
hall in particular it's the structural ceiling as well as some of the manifestation that we've used
throughout the station so people experience the station by entering the the new western ticket
hall off Dean Street and in the day they'll be very well lit we clad the ticket hall
using glazing we were very keen to make that visual connection between the ticket
and the surrounding streets what we wanted to do was for the ticket hall
to reflect some of the nocturnal venues within Soho the theatres the clubs and the bars and so
the interior of the station is actually clad in black stone and glass we wanted
it to reflect some of the venues that you'll be entering as you depart the station within Soho
I think when people visit the platforms for their first time they'll be amazed at their scale and
their size a typical Underground platform is 100 meters long and three meters deep
whereas here our platform is almost 250 meters long and four and a half meters deep these are
very light and airy very well lit and they have some very good way finding devices in terms of
graphics that will help you sort of like navigate your way through these large platform areas
so when we were designing the station we used the linewide components primarily within the platforms
cross passages and the ticket halls primarily in the graphics and the wayfinding because we allow
people especially in those stations which are key interchanges to differentiate between the London
Underground network and the Elizabeth line network so the light drums were for us a real opportunity
to solve an engineering requirement so each station needs to have acoustic absorption what we
wanted to do was design a fitting that could not only absorb the sound but also provide light but
we want to create quite a theatrical effect almost mimicking some of the venues that people will be
visiting when they visit Soho and so what we did was we created a light fitting that was set within
the soffit of the ceilings quite organically almost mimicking the movement of people
and this also meant that we didn't need to create a suspended ceiling which for maintenance purposes
is always a real challenge the materials that we used in the station were specified because
they needed to be very hard wearing and robust we use concrete glass steel and also glass reinforced
GRC which is a cement board which you've used on the platforms and within the Gosslett Yard
but each of these materials have to be designed to be able to be maintained for the lifespan of
the project so we believe that by using color and materials that is a much easier way of navigating
very large subterranean spaces than purely relying on signage
and wayfinding and I think we were just mindful that particularly in Tottenham Court Road station
it's probably visited by the greatest number of visitors to the city than almost any other station
and a lot of those people may struggle to actually read English and so what we wanted to use was
devices like colour and art as a tool for people to move through the station Tottenham Court Road
has two new pieces of public realm located at Dean Street and at Charring Cross Road
and the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road these are going to be
critical spaces that are designed to serve the station with the volume of passengers used in
Tottenham Court Road station and so these will become key public realm hubs within the city that
allow people to meet and then move on through St Giles and Soho the oversight development designed
at Tottenham Court Road station and Dean Street were designed as integral parts of the station
at Dean Street we're integrating retail at the ground floor and above we're actually creating
over 90 new homes and these are homes are located above the ticket hall as well as above
ventilation shaft the design of the architecture for the oversight development particularly block
D at the rear actually mimics some of the Georgian architecture that exists within Soho
over at Tottenham Court Road station and St Giles the oversight development there is a mixture of
commercial offices as well as a new theatre and new restaurants at ground floor
so these are all integrated with operational buildings that exist below I think the benefits
and opportunities of working on a project this scale is the people that you meet the other
architects the engineers the contractors and also the skills that you learn to be able to actually
put into future projects I think some of the biggest challenges really the number
of stakeholders that you have to engage with to actually get the station both designed accepted
and actually built and that's both been a challenge but also a real sort of joy
i'm particularly interested in seeing how people engage with the different elements that we use
in the station the color of the station the light drums and how they interface with those elements
and how they react to maybe how it will help them move to the station and maybe maybe it will make
them stop and pause within the station and look at some of the elements that we've used and maybe
ask a question in terms of why did we use them and what story does it tell and hopefully at Tottenham
Court Road station you have the architects telling a story about what happens on the streets above