Tuesday, 15 March 2016

The concrete cathedrals
Cockfosters stationS,
It’s a great shame that architect Charles Holden (1875-1960) never designed a church or cathedral. The Modernist architect would have made a very good job of it. He’s now most famous for his London Underground stations which formed a key part of the network’s corporate identity in the 1920s to 1940s.
Modernism is a surprisingly good fit with church architecture. While the Church of England built its last great Gothic cathedral as late as 1978 (admittedly it had been under construction for 74 years) in Liverpool¹, it also opened a spectacular Modernist cathedral in Coventry, in 1962. A replacement for the war-damaged original, the cathedral was initially controversial in discarding conventional cathedral construction. In form, it is radically Modernist, but in character, it is utterly peaceful and calming. It is a building to win over those sceptical of the appeal of Modernism.
Cathedrals and churches don’t, on the face of it, have a lot to do with transport, except for the fact that large railway termini were/are often referred to as the cathedrals of the Industrial Age. When you take a look at the soaring train shed of London’s St Pancras station, or pictures of the lost Penn Station in New York, USA, you get the point. But it’s train sheds (shelters that overspan tracks at a railway station) that bring us back to Charles Holden, and the first of this week’s transport beauties, his station at Cockfosters on London Underground’s Piccadilly Line.
Holden had worked for London Underground managing director / London Transport chief executive Frank Pick since the 1920s, remodelling existing stations and building new ones as the Underground expanded. Holden’s Art Deco/Modernist station designs (the argument over which they were isn’t worth getting into for now) formed part of Pick’s vision of an Underground corporate identity built on excellence in design. It extended beyond stations to maps, trains and publicity. Together, Pick, Holden and other talented designers built a corporate identity which essentially still defines the Underground (not to mention overshadowing the earlier attempts of Leslie Green to do the same thing).
Holden’s modernist stations have been characterised as “brick boxes with lids”, and the design arguably reached its zenith as a collection on the Piccadilly Line’s northern extension from Finsbury Park. Some of the brick boxes were square (like Oakwood) while some were cylindrical (like Arnos Grove) or even octagonal (Bounds Green). The bright and airy ticket halls with their huge glazed panels and lofty ceilings spoke of efficiency, modernity, and welcome. When it came to the terminus at Cockfosters, however, Holden broke away from his brick box model.
Cockfosters station opened in 1933. As a terminus on a surface site, the station was granted a grand train shed design of the classic railway variety. With only three tracks and four platforms, it just happened to be a classic train shed solution on a somewhat smaller scale than many. Though the concept harks back to the great Victorian railway termini, the design of Cockfosters is defiantly Modernist. Instead of a steel roof on brick or iron pillars, Cockfosters is a symphony in pale concrete. The most extraordinary thing is that this small scale cathedral of the Underground railway feels just like, well, a Modernist concrete cathedral.
 
 
The central section of the Transept is a double height nave with clerestory windows at the top, flanked by two single storey aisles – just like a church. The pillars of a conventional church are replaced by angular portal frames (structures which combine pillars and rafters into a single unit) repeating in pairs all the way down the train shed. The ‘aisles’ at the outer edge of the train shed are open at the sides, with the portal frame legs breaking up the space, cloister-like. If only Holden had built an actual cathedral; it really would have been quite something.
 
 
 
If the lack the street presence of Holden’s larger brick boxes with lids, that is because there was a  planned building developments to sit above. It’s a problem that continues to plague the Underground, with 1999’s Southwark tube station (for instance) also designed to have an office development over its eastern entrance, though that hasn’t been built yet either. Anyway, Cockfosters’ brilliance is not on-street ostentation, it’s the austere mathematical regularity of its bold ticket hall and Transept. Its proportions are quite simply mesmerizing

 
 

 












Monday, 7 March 2016



SIGN MANUAL





 


BAKERS STREET  
 

Cockfosters  Tube Station is the northern terminus on the Piccadilly line The station is located on Cockfosters Road (A111) approximately nine miles (14 km) from central London
The station opened on 31 July 1933, and has three tracks with platforms number 1 to 4; the centre track being served from both sides by platforms 2 and 3. This is an example of the so-called Spanish solution.
 
This we be my only terminus, unless I get a larger room, for which I would add Uxbridge
I first started with the street entrance.
After building the brick walls in two tone and adding glass bricks and signage, I printed and glued to cardboard.
So far I made three prototypes the last with plastic infill around the glass brick in fills
Balsa for the roof which I will paint white
 
The platform will be next, I have design the concrete beams and once I made 16. I will fill in the roof and begin on the platforms