If you’ve ever traversed the stylised hallways and escalators of Southwark or Westminster Tube stations in London, with their futuristic grey spaces and high design, and felt happily transported back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, it will come as welcome news that SAVE Britain’s Heritage is calling on Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to list the 11 stations of the modern Jubilee Line extension that opened in 1999 to critical acclaim.
Fresh from completing his Hong Kong metro, British-Italian architect Roland Paoletti (1931–2013) enlisted the help of a group of talented architects for the project, including Norman Foster (Canary Wharf), Sir Richard MacCormac (Southwark) and Michael Hopkins (Westminster); they all worked with the same engineering firm to ensure each station’s design was distinctive, yet conceptually connected.
Writing in The Times that year, SAVE president and founder Marcus Binney described MacCormac’s Southwark station as unfolding ‘like an opera in three acts. The entrance to the sunken rotunda ticket hall is like a descent into a whirlpool, with four flights of concentric steps narrowing into two’. He admired the ‘subtly coloured and highly polished’ concrete finishes and a curved screen with 630 triangular panes of blue glass designed by artist Alexander Beleschenko inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s set design for The Magic Flute.
Southwark Station, in particular, has faced a number of threats, including an abandoned plan to demolish the concourse in 2017 — at that point, the Twentieth Century Society requested listed status, which was denied — and a current plan to build a 17-storey block of student and affordable housing above it; work has not yet begun.
‘The Jubilee Line extension is one of the most important and thrilling examples of public-transport infrastructure and architecture in Britain,’ comments Henrietta Billings, director of SAVE. ‘Paoletti commissioned up-and-coming designers, as well as established practices, with outstanding, unique and creative results for each station that have stood the test of time. Southwark, together with all the extension stations, needs celebration and recognition now and for future generations. We welcome this new listing assessment and urge the Secretary of State to go further and list all 11 stations.’
Annunciata Elwes is the news and property editor of Country Life
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