Artworks: © Yayoi Kusama, courtesy Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro. © Spencer Finch, courtesy Lisson Gallery. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy the artist and Victoria Mirois not easy to catalogue. Its rail network
expands in fits and starts, its tentacles
reaching out into some suburbs while leaving
others isolated. It is a city of interchanges,
crossovers and links, with around 366 railway
stations and 270 Tube stations (some of the
former include the latter). Ever since the
system was given a cartographic nip and tuck
by Henry Beck’s Tube map in 1933, the form
of the network has stayed familiar. But Beck’s
graphical simplicity cleverly conceals the
geographical reality. Our mental map of
London is skewed as a result.
The Elizabeth line will see another colour
added to the map, punching a purple swathe
through the tangle to make a host of new
connections. Forty one stations, ten of them
newly built, are strung along it, while spurs
reach down to the Heathrow terminals and
Abbey Wood via Canary Wharf. Eventually,
the whole line will take you from Reading in
the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the
east. That’s around 57 miles as the crow flies,
26 of which run through the new tunnels
blasted beneath London.
Enough of the statistics. The sense of the
greater good is strong with public transport
projects, and for all its faults, the capital’s
network is still seen as one of the best in
the world and a source of civic pride. The
upheaval brought by Crossrail has proved
challenging, with stations and roads closed,
routes re-routed, timetables changed and
chunks of streetscape demolished, mostnotably at Bond Street, Tottenham Court
Road and Farringdon. But now the last is set
to become one of London’s most significant
stations, thanks to the intersection of the
Circle, Hammersmith & City and
Metropolitan Tube lines with a National Rail
station serving both City Thameslink and
the Elizabeth line. This is the kind of option
overload that city planners usually only get
to dream about. With rapid connections to
Heathrow and Gatwick and around 140 trains
an hour at peak times, Farringdon is on track
to becoming an urban crossroads that links
north and south, east and west, the UK and
the rest of the world.
The new station descends eight storeys
below street level, with banks of escalators
and new inclined lifts set beneath the faceted
concrete roofs of its two ticket halls. The
back of house is already a forest of pipes and
conduits, with vast vent shafts adjoining
slender access ways and complex weaves
of wiring. Crossrail will eventually serve up
to 200 million passengers a year, but none
will see behind the scenes. Instead, they’ll
be treated to the purple-tinged branding that
ties the Elizabeth line into the network, the
crisply detailed concrete panels, the discreet
lighting and elegant signage, as well as a
significant chunk of new art (see right).
Most of all, Londoners will have their
horizons vastly expanded; by descending
these escalators they’ll be within a few hours
of practically anywhere on the planet. ∂SOME OF THE 81 NEW
ESCALATORS BEING INSTALLED
ON THE ELIZABETH LINEBy descending these escalators, Londoners
will have their horizons vastly expanded
ART UNDERGROUNDFrom a digital piece by Israeli
photographer Michal Rovner at
Canary Wharf to British artist
Simon Periton’s gems cascading
down the Farringdon concourse,
Crossrail will deliver site-specific
works across seven stations.YAYOI KUSAMA
Liverpool Street
Kusama’s Infinite Accumulation, with
mirrored steel spheres connected
by tubular rods, gives sculptural form
to her renowned polka-dot motif.SPENCER FINCH
Paddington
American artist Finch’s A Cloud Index
sees his pastel drawings digitally
transferred to a 120m x 18m glass
canopy above Paddington’s ticket hall.CHANTAL JOFFE
Whitechapel
British painter Joffe spent a Sunday
afternoon observing the community in
Whitechapel to create a playful portrait
series that will adorn the platforms.118 ∑
Transport