The scope of the station as it stands now and as you see here today was developed through the
middle of the 2000s and the vision was very much defined by the constraints that we've got here so
at Broadgate we have a below ground ticket hall
and at Moorgate we have a ticket hall of ground floor, so it's very much looking
at the transition of spaces between there and creating a space that people really want to use,
it's intuitive, people feel safe, but also it's visually exciting as people move through it.
Building underground here is probably one of the most complex stations on the line, we have a lot
of existing infrastructure, existing underground railway lines things like Post Office railway,
culverted old rivers, sewers so it's been very much like almost a piece of surgery where you can
push the tunnels through, create spaces, ticket halls and that's very much governed also by the
buildings that sit over the top so we've had where possible avoid going underneath buildings as well.
It's more about functionality, it's more about creating interesting exciting spaces
where we can get light in, where we can create an architecture that is within the volumes is
interesting for people to move through and it's very much going through a sequence of spaces
both rectilinear spaces, quite low ticket halls into large boxes that have escalators in,
and then into a network of tunnels which take you down to the platforms. The challenges were very
much dictated by where we could run tunnels, where we could avoid going underneath buildings, avoid
affecting buildings, substructured below ground structure and so we've sort of going from where
we could build ticket halls at Broadgate it's limited by where we could get a ticket hall
below ground in the street and then at Moorgate the ticket hall sits over the top of the existing
Metropolitan & Circle lines, and then that has an office building that's being built over it.
So it was then a question of where you could feed tunnels to connect in with the running tunnels
of the railway down below, so the railway is approximately 30 meters below ground so
the escalators and the tunnels don't just go straight they have to go through a series
of switches to be able to get down to where the running tunnels are. So we excavated a very large
hole, sits below ground level and then there's a glazed canopy that sits over the entrance,
so that glazed canopy very much signals the entrance into the station and that sits in a new
public space, so the old Liverpool Street now has no traffic in it it's a new hard landscape space
and you enter down through this canopy into the station, and then at night the nature of it being
glass it actually glows like a lantern so it works very well from a wayfinding point of view.
The public realm at both ends of the station what we've looked to do is enhance the public
realm around the entrance to the station, give much more priority or much greater priority to
pedestrians rather than traffic, move the traffic out. Earlier designs had a lot more landscaping,
soft landscaping in, areas to seat but with the large volumes of people moving through the spaces
now they are predominantly hard landscape but what's happening along with the public realm
developing there is also an ongoing program of development of the buildings either side
as well so it very much feels like a new piece of city at either end. When we design buildings one
of the key sort of elements of the building is giving it an identity so we adopted this
folded concrete form, so what you see isn't an architectural lining it is the structure and
it's formed from precast concrete panels and we've adopted this folded form which works structurally,
gives it depth but it also gives architectural interest and so that motif, that that appearance
we've taken through both ticket halls and then through into the escalator boxes as well
before you then go down into the tunnel network. Rather than have large flat surfaces what we've
done with the concrete, we did a great deal of testing with it it's a reconstituted stone
so it's a mix that is based on Portland stone Portland stone being the main material that's
used through the traditional City buildings and what we've added into it is mica which gives it
a little bit of sparkle, the groove, the routing was put in there to give us texture and form and
so that when you look across the surface you read this folding of the grooves within the concrete,
so it helps you read the different folds, and we did a lot of experimentation,
did a lot of mock-ups testing how this would look and how it looked with the light on it
to get the right profile that gave us what we wanted. It's very much what gives the station
its identity this triangulation and this folding of the soffits. As architects Wilkinson Eyre
we have a bit of a specialism in oversite development that's where we build over the top of
stations and the like we're currently building Moorgate the oversite at that end is very much
acting as a large bridge which we're currently building as a new headquarters for Deutsche Bank.
There are other bits of infrastructure that come up through to ground level the ventilation shafts,
escape shafts and then there are new office buildings that are wrapping around those as well,
so there's quite a lot of effect by building the station that happens above ground as well.
So particularly at Moorgate we have the benefits where we've both been building the station so we
have a great deal of knowledge of what's in the ground and what's happening as a building sequence
there and then the challenge of trying to build a building over the top of it is significant,
particularly in regards to protecting the asset that sits below that building,
and also as we are doing now is that we're already using the new ticket hall there
and so it's very much about how you protect people as well, so there's a very careful program planned
out as to how you build these two things in sequence and maintain access to the station below
and still carry on building the building over above. On the lower levels this is a tunnelled
space, it has these totems that are set down through it that have both up lighters in but also
they provide information wayfinding and the like, what we have down here is a line-wide language
where we have a system of what's called GRC panels, Glass Reinforced Concrete and it's a very
fluid plastic material so what we've been able to do unlike a lot of traditional underground tunnel
linings is that we've been able to express the flow and the curves through the spaces
it's very expressive of how people will move through the station, move through the concourse,
through what we call here an adit that leads you through into the platforms themselves, very long
platforms and they're protected similar to the Jubilee line they're protected with edge doors,
there are a number of common components, designed industrial design components seating and the like,
bracketry and as architects we've been given that as a palette of materials and elements
to use within our station design, but given a fairly free reign of how and where we use those,
so on the floor we use a reconstituted stone has a high level of granite in it it's known as grenazo
so it's effectively a terrazzo with bits of stone within it, very hard wearing, used quite a lot
across the Underground network but we've used quite a light colour, we've tried to use a light
palette of materials so that the spaces feel inviting and welcoming to come into and then
the walls are lined with Glass Reinforced Concrete so we can take up these quite complex geometries
where you go from one tunnel to another tunnel in a sort of very expressive sort of fluid way
the deep escalator box we wanted to very much feel like the nave of a medieval cathedral,
its scale, its volume is very similar to that, and it was very much about coming out
of the tunnel network as you come up from the platforms and come out of the sort of tighter
tunnel network, we wanted to enjoy the sort of excitement of coming into this large space,
we worked very hard to move the props from within that space that quite often dominate these deep
underground spaces and so you could enjoy the volume of the space with the folded concrete forms
to the soffit running through from the ticket halls then on the wall
we've put a patterned cladding that's very expressive of almost like geological layering
but we all through in similar way with the the soffit is very much looking at sort of strong
geometric lines so there's there's a richness to the spaces as you move through them. We've shared
quite a lot of knowledge as the designs have developed to see how the different architects
have developed their stations and the language they've taken through into those there's some
common components like the GRC cladding but then in spaces like the ticket halls we've been given
quite a free reign of what we do. The client, the Crossrail body have been very good at encouraging
the architects to give their own identity station and I'm very keen to see how people
react to the spaces and that you know that they actually respond in the way that we anticipate