Redevelopment Plans for Liverpool Street - Development Policy Going Backwards

[ashkeba]

They can be excellent architecture, but in what world does this count? It's a glass box so uninspiring they've resorted to a laughably unrealistic bright white translucent glow that we all know it won't have.

You mean that's the finished building and not the scaffolding and sheeting? Wow. Even brutalist fans would be horrified at that blandness.

 

[greyman42]

Having seen that PDF I think it actually looks OK, a bit Kings Cross like maybe. What's there now looks dated and crowded, so maybe it will actually be better?

I tend to agree. They built an office block on top of Farringdon and that looks ok. Modern architecture in The City tends to be pretty good.

 

[WesternBiker]

You mean that's the finished building and not the scaffolding and sheeting? Wow. Even brutalist fans would be horrified at that blandness.

Scale is really important in all of this: and the model makes the Victorian element of the station look buried - which is possibly the worst of both worlds.

 

[trebor79]

Scale is really important in all of this: and the model makes the Victorian element of the station look buried - which is possibly the worst of both worlds.

I agree. Given so much of the current station is pastiche, I'm left wondering whether a more pleasing and better overall scheme might be delivered by razing it and starting again.

 

[WAB]

Most of the project objectives could be easily fulfilled within the existing station without a loss of character and light. The photos they use in their consultation are not indicative of the true nature of the destruction they are hoping to undertake to get rich quick.

 

[stuu]

I'm not bothered about the loss of the pastiche entrance, but the way the other block sits on top of the hotel is terrible. It would be much better to build a taller tower over the entrance and leave the hotel alone

 

[306024]

This video, which has been shown at both exhibitions so far at the Great Eastern Hotel, shows the intentions from about 2:00 onwards.

 

[WizCastro197]

This video, which has been shown at both exhibitions so far at the Great Eastern Hotel, shows the intentions from about 2:00 onwards.

The actual project itself and what it hopes to achieve look very interesting, and so do their plans, but this white colour they are using, just looks so boring, and it seems most of the character of this station, will be eradicated.

 

[WesternBiker]

This video, which has been shown at both exhibitions so far at the Great Eastern Hotel, shows the intentions from about 2:00 onwards.

I note that the video doesn't show the office block which will be plonked over the whole site.

 

[Stockholm East]

The existing thread is closed to new posts, but the redevelopment plans for Liverpool Street mean that the concourse is still under threat.

I understand that the station badly needs investment but it should be possible to afford lifts and escalators without burying the concourse under 16 storeys.

Here's a blog about it.

The problem for campaigners is that much of what passengers think of as 19th century structures actually date back only to 1991, when those two unwieldy parts of the station were hewn into one with a consistent gate line and single, light-filled concourse that looks as though it’s been there forever. But it’s only 32 years old and so can be destroyed as though it has no value, and the developers can hide behind the idea that the Victorian bits are going to stay and it’s only the horrible modern rubbish (as many would say) that’s going. The January 2023 proposals state that 9 out of 10 people support the preservation of the Victorian train sheds. But many of those people, I suggest, would have thought that the concourse was included in this....

 

[Islineclear3_1]

I remember the old station and the 1991 refurbishment. As if that was bad enough, at least the new concourse still got a lot of daylight. I really hope the developers don't build over it.

 

[yorksrob]

It's not even as though office space in the City is at a premium nowadays. There's no excuse for such a slash and burn approach from Network Rail.

 

[greyman42]

It's not even as though office space in the City is at a premium nowadays. There's no excuse for such a slash and burn approach from Network Rail.

Apparently their is still demand for premium modern office space, as opposed to buildings that are less well equipped.

 

[Bald Rick]

Apparently there is still demand for premium modern office space, as opposed to buildings that are less well equipped.

Indeed so. Although the London office market is quite cool at present, that is mostly because there are lots of new offices (many built speculatively) coming to market now at just the wrong time. These were all given the go ahead when interest rates were next to nothing and the forward market was red hot.

However my friends in the city property market tell me that the market is showing early signs of picking up, and since Covid there has been, perhaps understandably, not much in the way of new proposals brought forward by developers. In about 5-7 years there is likely to be a much hotter market, and so now could be exactly the right time for a high quality development to be kicked off.

 

[Mikey C]

Indeed so. Although the London office market is quite cool at present, that is mostly because there are lots of new offices (many built speculatively) coming to market now at just the wrong time. These were all given the go ahead when interest rates were next to nothing and the forward market was red hot.

However my friends in the city property market tell me that the market is showing early signs of picking up, and since Covid there has been, perhaps understandably, not much in the way of new proposals brought forward by developers. In about 5-7 years there is likely to be a much hotter market, and so now could be exactly the right time for a high quality development to be kicked off.

Surely there will be loads of poor quality offices which should be demolished and replaced, rather than trying to build on new sites?

London needs better office buildings, it doesn't need more office buildings.

 

[greyman42]

Surely there will be loads of poor quality offices which should be demolished and replaced, rather than trying to build on new sites?

The interiors of these buildings may offer poor quality offices but the buildings themselves can have great character, so demolishing them may not be an option.

 

[yorksrob]

The interiors of these buildings may offer poor quality offices but the buildings themselves can have great character, so demolishing them may not be an option.

Though, the City of London has more than its fair share of crappy old office blocks that could be sacrificed in place of the pleasant, light concourse at Liverpool Street.

 

[RailWonderer]

I see a lot of benefits to this plan having watched the video. It will use the existing space far better and consolidate the main floor area with fewer exits so crowds are not criss crossing each other. The station as it is now is a hot mess. The only problem will be the loss of lighting in the concourse area which will make the station feel dingy using gaudy white panelling to make it feel light when in fact it will be blocking proper light. If this does go ahead it will have to put Liverpool St there with Victoria as my least favourite London terminals.

 

[Mikey C]

The interiors of these buildings may offer poor quality offices but the buildings themselves can have great character, so demolishing them may not be an option.

I don't mean nice old buildings, I was thinking more about some of the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s buildings which are now defunct.

After all much of Broadgate, built in the late 80s, has been demolished and rebuilt already.

 

[greyman42]

I don't mean nice old buildings, I was thinking more about some of the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s buildings which are now defunct.

After all much of Broadgate, built in the late 80s, has been demolished and rebuilt already.

Yes, i would agree with that. The majority of recent architecture in The City has been done well.

 

[camflyer]

Apparently their is still demand for premium modern office space, as opposed to buildings that are less well equipped.

Yup - we've just moved our London head office to a smaller facility but one which is much better equipped. Businesses don't need the floorspace any more but they want modern offices in well connected areas which are going to be nice places to work to attract hybrid workers to come in and have lower running cost.

There are a lot of businesses moving now as leases come to and end which gives them a lot of negotiating power with so many empty units available.

 

[eldomtom2]

But it’s only 32 years old and so can be destroyed as though it has no value, and the developers can hide behind the idea that the Victorian bits are going to stay and it’s only the horrible modern rubbish (as many would say) that’s going.

This is a worryingly common idea among academics working in the field of historic buildings - of course they aren't the ones proposing the redevelopment, but they certainly have an impact on the discourse...

 

[TAS]

The planning application for the redevelopment has now been published. Doesn't look like there have been any major changes from the consultation, but there are now floor plans so it's much easier to understand what is being proposed.

This article by Building Magazine has a good collection of visualisations and a nice summary of the proposed redevelopment:

Sellar unveils new visuals of £1.5bn Liverpool Street plans as application is finally made public
By Tom Lowe
City insists delay was caused by complexity of the scheme and not by a redesign

Sellar and Network rail have unveiled dozens of new images of the highly controversial proposals for a £1.5bn redevelopment of Liverpool Street station.

The highly detailed visuals come as the Herzog & de Meuron-designed scheme’s huge planning application is finally made public, nearly six months after it was submitted to the City of London Corporation.

A City of London Corporation spokesperson said the delay in making the application public was due to the “complexity” of the scheme and not because technical issues had been uncovered following planning submission.

The application, which contains more than 450 separate documents, provides previously unseen views of the 20-storey building which will be cantilevered above the grade II-listed former Great Eastern Hotel.

The documents also reveal Scott Brownrigg is working on elements of the station redesign, with the project team also including Townshend Landscape Architects on landscape design, WSP as engineer, project manager Gardiner & Theobald, heritage consultant Bridges Associates, planning consultant DP9 and accessibility consultant David Bonnett Associates.

Sellar, the developer of the Shard and the Paddington Central redevelopment, has formed a joint venture with Hong Kong-based firm MTR Corporation, which operates the Elizabeth Line, with the pair working together with Network Rail on Liverpool Street.

The application confirms that 50 Liverpool Street, the 1980s extension of the Victorian train shed, will be demolished under the plans and replaced with a much broader entrance square designed in a contemporary style.

The former Great Eastern Hotel at 40 Liverpool Street will be “transformed”, removing modernised elements, that the project team say have altered the original character of the building, in order to “bring out its unique character and historical features”.

Images show proposals for a new pedestrian route running directly through a lobby in the listed building into the station concourse, with an electronic train time table hanging from the ceiling.

Other parts of the hotel including a bar area and the Edwardian Lady Abercorn’s Room will be “restored to their former glory”, according to the application, and a new garden will be built on the roof.

Above, the cantilevered office block will reach a height of 108m and will house the “highest quality and most sustainable office in the city”, according to the design documents, along with a new 256-room hotel on the upper levels and an open air swimming pool.

Inside the station, views of the train shed which are currently obscured will be opened up and the concourse areas will be extensively redesigned to reduce overcrowding, with the current access to the concourse to be replaced by three oval-shaped escalators.

The project team said the plans would see Liverpool Street “stand apart as one of the great stations of the world, fit for the 21st century traveller and a destination in its own right”.

Heritage groups have already reacted with dismay to the application, with Griff Rhys Jones, president of the Victorian Society and the Save Liverpool Street Station campaign, urging members of the public to donate to a fund to fight the plans.

“It is unacceptable that Network Rail has ignored the 22,363 people who have signed the petition against the plans and the experts in the heritage and architecture sectors who say not to do this,” Rhys Jones said.

“These plans are insensitive, unnecessary and traduce a famous gateway to London, a listed working part of our history.

“I know all the heritage bodies combined are appalled by the precedent it would set. It must be rejected. We will fight to ensure that it is.”

The group has reformed the Liverpool Street Station Campaign which successfully stopped proposals to demolish the station in the 1970s and replace it with a brutalist-inspired design.

The campaign, which is also being backed by Save Britain’s Heritage. The Twentieth Century Society, called for communities secretary Michael Gove to call in the plans when the application was first submitted back in March.

Confusion had surrounded the whereabouts of the application in the following months due to the absence of any updates on the scheme from either the project team or the City’s planning team.

A City of London Corporation spokesperson said: “Due to the complexity of the scheme, there was a substantial volume of documents to be checked and there was dialogue with the applicant throughout this process, to ensure all the correct information was submitted.

“The scheme has not been redesigned since the application was submitted,” the spokesperson said.

It is also understood that the City case officer overseeing the application went on a sabbatical towards the end of the validation process, causing a further delay, and a technical error in uploading the hundreds of documents pushed back the publication further.

 

[uglymonkey]

Why do they need to redevelop it again? Tons of places are crying out for this kind of investment (and are more needy and deserving than this surely?)

 

[RailWonderer]

Why do they need to redevelop it again? Tons of places are crying out for this kind of investment (and are more needy and deserving than this surely?)

Liverpool St has the misfortune of being in the city of London which draws in international investors that want to build high rise investment property and care little for history or natural lighting.

They pay architects and PR thousands to put spin on the fact they are making the station look worse for the sake of building an investment product 20 stories high.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Why do they need to redevelop it again? Tons of places are crying out for this kind of investment (and are more needy and deserving than this surely?)

It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a list of deficiencies of the current Liverpool Street station, starting with very poor accessibility of the Central and Hammersmith & City Lines and general step-free access to/from the station in various directions. Ditto the toilet facilities. Patterns of travel and use have changed in all sorts of ways: across the Elizabeth Line, Stansted Airport, decline of foreign ferry travel via Harwich, growth in leisure travel to Stratford Westfield and various other directions, decline in traditional commuting.

There is no longer a need to cater for mail and parcels traffic. Methods of ticket retailing and revenue protection have changed massively.

So a significant 'refresh' is already overdue. But whether the proposed scheme is the best that can be done is an entirely different question.

 

[Chester1]

It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a list of deficiencies of the current Liverpool Street station, starting with very poor accessibility of the Central and Hammersmith & City Lines and general step-free access to/from the station in various directions. Ditto the toilet facilities. Patterns of travel and use have changed in all sorts of ways: across the Elizabeth Line, Stansted Airport, decline of foreign ferry travel via Harwich, growth in leisure travel to Stratford Westfield and various other directions, decline in traditional commuting.

There is no longer a need to cater for mail and parcels traffic. Methods of ticket retailing and revenue protection have changed massively.

So a significant 'refresh' is already overdue. But whether the proposed scheme is the best that can be done is an entirely different question.

When there is a private sector proposal to redevelop the station at no cost to the taxpayer it will be nearly impossible to get public sector funding. I can't see how the 90s section has any historic value, its younger than the average passenger!

 

[higthomas]

I've not really followed this story, but I found IanVisits summary interesting:

After months of consultations, the formal planning application has been filed for a massive office block to be built above Liverpool Street station.

In an area dominated by tall slender buildings, the proposal is a huge groundscraper of a building, albeit one raised several stories above the ground and plonked rather awkwardly above the surrounding architecture.

The argument put forward by the developer is that Liverpool Street station is overcrowded and needs a major overhaul, and they’ll pay for it if they can build a large office block at the same time. The station is certainly awkward in its layout and undeniably needs improving, but a closer look at the proposed scheme is not the wholescale upgrade for the station that it seems at first glance.

Currently, the station is slightly below street level, with the main concourse level with the train platforms and a raised mezzanine running around the edges at street level.

The plans would see a new floor added at street level and then escalators down to the platform level to catch trains. That would add much needed waiting area for passengers and more ticket barriers by the trains, and while it’s visually a major intervention, the scale of the work being proposed is actually fairly modest in scope.

In essence, they’re just adding a new floor by filling in the mezzanine space and putting in lots of new escalators. All very nice, and while structurally they will be doing a lot more than that, the structural changes are not to provide more passenger space, but to support a massive office block above the station.

Pleasingly, the proposal would open up views of the Victorian train shed, which were blocked by the 1990s redevelopment that added the row of shops above the ticket line, but it does feel as if the proposed development is oddly backwards.

However, the main passenger area on the lower floor will feel compressed under the new floor above, while the trains will sit underneath a vaulted and impressive ceiling, which seems a waste frankly. If it were my design, I’d have installed the new street-level floor above the train platforms instead, creating a vast and impressive pedestrian plaza underneath the Victorian ceiling.

The proposal says that the number of ticket gates to the mainline trains will be increased by nearly 50% from 36 to 53, with most of the increase in gates focused on platforms 1 to 10, which cause much of the congestion at the station today. However, that will be achieved by removing the small retail units next to the platforms — and that doesn’t require a giant building on top of the station to fund it. A similar scheme costing £30 million is currently underway at London Victoria station.

For the Underground, not much appears to be changing – and while the new lifts will offer step-free access to all lines, which is not possible at the moment and is therefore a long overdue improvement, the upgrades being suggested feel very piecemeal and not a particularly large scale revamping of the tube station.

What became apparent from a reading of the planning application is that the proposal was initiated by the Department for Transport’s (Dft) market led proposals scheme, which encourages companies to put forward commercial schemes to improve railways. The proposal did not come from Network Rail, although naturally, they were involved in the later phases to ensure it would work as a railway project.

Although much effort is made in the documents to explain how the station is in dire need of an upgrade, and the only way to fund that is for a sizeable oversite development, again, it feels like a backward argument is being put forward.

The cost of the proposed station upgrades does not feel like they are close to the £450 million being talked about by the developer, and a large amount of the structural changes being proposed seem more aligned with making the station capable of holding up a very large building above the station than it is upgrading the station itself.

If a developer were looking for a large plot of land in the City of London to build offices and a hotel, the cost of the plot of land and clearance would not be dissimilar to the amount of money being suggested, as would be spent on the station upgrade. In effect, this is an “air rights” transaction, whereby a developer has found a large plot of air to develop and, unable to buy the land underneath, has come up with a way of arguing for the office block to be built because the land underneath needs it.
If the oversite development wasn’t so vast, it might be something to applaud, but the sheer bulk of the building, sitting exceptionally uncomfortably above the Victorian hotel and surrounded by fairly low rise offices is entirely out of scale for the area.
If it goes ahead, generations of commuters will regret the despoiling of a railway station crushed by the weight of the building above.

 

[alf]

Sounds as if the platform experience will be like bring on the dreary Birmingham new street platforms, like the basement of an under the office car park.
I enjoy Liverpool st Station. It is airy & spacious. What a shame it will change for the worse...for no railway benefit.

 

[thomalex]

Liverpool St has the misfortune of being in the city of London which draws in international investors that want to build high rise investment property and care little for history or natural lighting.

They pay architects and PR thousands to put spin on the fact they are making the station look worse for the sake of building an investment product 20 stories high.

Exactly this. Any new site in the City already has a building on it so developers go around finding tired buildings and propose a redevelopment, only this time it's a station.

And Network Rail on the other hand are thinking great, this given us a lot of station improvements (lifts, escalators etc) for free. The parts they are knocking down aren't technically listed anyway.

At no point does anyone give a damn about what it actually looks like and whether the redevelopment done 30 years ago is far better and much more sympathetic to the heritage elements of the station than plonking an office tower on top of it.