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As a new point of arrival into London’s West End yet located in one of the most established neighbourhoods on the line, Bond Street station, designed by John McAslan + Partners with engineers WSP, creates an uplifting passenger experience and delivers new connections locally, referencing the local vernacular in materials and creating a modern, classical approach. A work of major and intricate transport infrastructure and civil engineering, the new Bond Street station is an integral part of a transformative urban redevelopment embracing new mixed-used buildings including retail above and around the two new entrances. The scheme also incorporates a new pedestrian square, the first in Mayfair for over a century and significant landscape and urban improvements.
The station entrances play a key role – practically and visually – in an updated Mayfair streetscape, responding to and heightening the character of their immediate surroundings. The focus was to articulate the entrances as confident and clearly legible front doors to the new station while also responding carefully to the existing grain and historic fabric of this part of central London. The response both built and urban design, needed close engagement with the client, the City of Westminster and other local stakeholders.
The project set ambitious targets in terms of sustainable travel as a new public transport choice, with specific objectives in relieving overcrowding on existing underground and train services, adding 10% extra rail capacity and decreasing journey times across London. Specifically at each station entrance, these were oriented to take advantage of grand floor to ceiling windows and high ceilings connecting to the streets around and each concourse benefits from natural daylight, passive ventilation and with minimal structural clutter to help provide intuitive wayfinding through visual connections. Accessibility is delivered form street to train at both station entrances.
The high and spacious, coffered ceiling interiors of both entrances are concerned primarily with visual connection and ease of movement. The grand floor-to-ceiling colonnade windows bring generous daylight into the ticket halls while generous views out allow passengers, especially those leaving the station, to orient themselves. Both interiors employ a high-quality, pared-back palette of materials using GRC, glass panels to the walls and a floor grid emphasising the simple, elegant frame and proportions. Fluted bronze columns are self-conscious references to the classic Underground stations designed by Charles Holden in the 1930s. Artwork, commissioned by Crossrail, was integrated from the outset of the station design referencing movement and time.
John McAslan + Partners’ design for Crossrail’s Bond Street Station creates an important new interchange. The practice has responded to this enormously challenging project (an integral part of what is currently Europe’s largest construction project) with a design of impressive clarity, providing connections to the existing London Underground station while also delivering deep east-west platforms which emerge at street level via two new ticket halls. Julian Robinson, Former Head of Architecture
John McAslan + Partners is an award-winning international architectural practice based in London, with further studios in Edinburgh, Belfast and Sydney. An extensive portfolio of projects in the UK and overseas includes commercial, infrastructure, residential, education, hospitality, urban design, cultural, heritage and landscape sectors. The practice has won in excess of 200 international awards, including some 300 RIBA Awards, has been named Architectural Practice of the Year and World Architect of the Year on a number of occasions, and has also won three Europa Nostra Awards, the EU’s Prize for Cultural Heritage, and is the recipient of the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise (International Trade) in 2014 and 2022.
