The Jubilee Line Extension

Kenneth Powell

Editions

Review

The Jubilee Line extension, comprising 11underground stations, 3 major transport interchanges and a train depot, surely emerges as the most significant of the millennium additions to London - and the only felicitous by-product of the Dome.

Considering the somewhat harlequin approach to choosing the assorted architectural practices, the result has proved remarkably cohesive, as this new book by journalist Kenneth Powell reveals, and on the evidence herein, I much regret that I passed up an opportunity of a guided tour of the venues with many of the contributing experts.

From the Piranesi-like network under the new Portcullis House at Westminster, to the glistening maintenance and repair terminal at Stratford, some of the finest buildings of recent years have been unveiled as worthy successors to the traditions of Leslie Green in the early 1900s and to the outstanding achievements of Charles Holding in the 1930s.

Norman Foster’s station at Canary Wharf is no less than a magnificent and luminous cathedral to commuters and is certainly one of his greatest achievements, while Southwark boasts a central concourse with a wall of glass, dazzlingly engineered by Richard MacCormack.  At Greenwich the sheer pleasure of the tube station cum bus terminal almost compensates for the dubious delights of the nearby Dome.

Powell gives us a lucid account of the planning procedures, including details of the enlightened decision to appoint a series of high profile practitioners to shape the individual elements, significantly taking the project out of what was considered to be the realms of civil engineering and into the arena of art.

Each station is discussed in detail and the erudite text is accompanied by specially commissioned photographs of a very high standard, as well as by plans and drawings, making this an invaluable record of a thrilling undertaking which must be considered a major landmark in the history of London. - review by Stewart Grimshaw

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