Southwark London Underground Station (including its interchange with Waterloo East Station)

Summary

Southwark underground station on the Jubilee Line was designed by architects MacCormac Jamieson Prichard (partner in charge Richard MacCormac) and built in 1994-1999 as one of the six new stations on the line's extension. The project to extend the line was notable for the emphasis on the quality of its architecture and engineering above and below ground.

Reasons for Designation

Southwark underground station, 1994-1999 to designs by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard (architects) and Babtie/L G Mouchel and partners (engineers) is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a work of transport infrastructure realised as an unfolding sequence of contrasting architectural spaces, using formal and structural devices, controlled sight lines and natural and artificial light to strong creative effect;
* in particular for the intermediate concourse, the product of a close collaboration between architect, artist and engineer to deliver one of the most memorable and theatrical spaces on the London Underground network;
* for the consistently high quality of design, material finish and detailing across the station complex;
* for the success of its planning, which responds to the engineering challenges of the site with a rational, legible route between platform and street level.

Historic interest:

* as one of six wholly new underground stations to be built on the Jubilee Line Extension, one of the most significant infrastructure schemes of the later C20 in Britain which was built to serve the development and regeneration of East London and the docklands area;
* as a major public work by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, an important late-C20 architectural practice.

History

Southwark underground station was built between 1994 and 1999 to designs by the practice MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, the partner in charge being Richard MacCormac. It was one of six wholly new underground stations to be built on the Jubilee Line Extension (JLE), which opened in 1999.

The site for Southwark’s new underground station presented the design team with complex planning and engineering constraints which dictated its layout. The train tunnels and station platforms were to run underneath a large C19 brick railway viaduct to avoid the deep piles of surrounding buildings; underground telecom cables and sewers presented further obstacles. Multiple engineering and construction approaches were adopted, from the below-ground mining of the platform tunnels to the top-down excavation of the intermediate concourse. MJP worked with the engineers to rationalise a complex sequence of interconnecting, offset spaces at progressively deeper levels.

The station’s principal above ground presence is the entrance portal to the sunken ticket hall on the corner of Blackfriars Road and The Cut, and the interchange with Waterloo East mainline station to the west. Generous provision of escalators, rather than stairs, were key to making the JLE stations more accessible. At Southwark they descend from the ticket hall and interchange to converge on an intermediate concourse from where further escalators lead to a lower concourse which feeds the platform tunnels. The route from street to platform is also accessible via lift.

The interior of the circular ticket hall pays homage to Charles Holden’s 1932 Arnos Grove station on the Piccadilly Line (1932, listed Grade II* National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 135981), but familiar to MacCormac’s work, the station more widely shows the influence of John Soane and Alvar Aalto, expressed in the unfolding route through the complex, the bold formal and spatial relationships, the controlled reveal of views and clever use of light, both natural and artificial. MacCormac likened it to an episodic journey with ‘alternating experiences of confinement and spatial expansion’ (New Connections, p 28).

On the intermediate concourse a collaboration between MacCormac and the glass artist Alexander Beleschenko produced a soaring curved screen of blue glass. The work presented significant technical challenges in the formation of its inward-leaning curve from multiple tessellating glass tiles, the fritting process which gives the glass its distinctive pattern and the steel structure which holds it in place and was designed to allow the screen to withstand the air movement caused by the trains passing through the tunnels (AJ, December 1997). According to MacCormac, the scheme was inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel's 1815 set design for the Queen of the Night's palace in The Magic Flute. Alongside this conscious theatricality, however, the success of the complex is as a logically planned, spacious and accessible underground station which takes passengers between street level and tube train via a pleasurable and efficient route.

The station won a number of awards, including a RIBA bronze medal in 2000 and was chosen as the Royal Fine Arts Commission/British Sky Broadcasting building of the year for 2000, receiving a Special Commendation. It received the Concrete Society Certificate of Excellence - Building Category, 2000 and the British Construction Industry Awards - Special Award for Pursuit of Architectural and Engineering Excellence in Public Transport, 2000.

The main station building was designed to allow for a commercial development to be constructed above. While the architects produced an outline scheme for this, it has, as yet, remained unexecuted.

(Sir) Richard MacCormac (1938-2014) completed his architectural education at the Bartlett School in London. He worked for Powell and Moya, Lyons, Israel and Ellis and London Borough of Merton before setting up his own practice, subsequently forming a partnership with Peter Jamieson in 1972, later joined by David Prichard. The firm worked predominantly on housing schemes, notably in Milton Keynes and their listed Shadwell Basin housing scheme of 1986-1988 (Grade II, NHLE entry 1451936). The 1983 Sainsbury Building at Worcester College, Oxford, marked a breakthrough for the practice, leading to further buildings at Oxford and Cambridge universities, including New Court residential building and the chapel at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 1984-1986 and 1990-1991 respectively (both listed Grade II, NHLE entry 1489406, 1489402). Later projects include the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum, London (2000); the firm’s Phoenix regeneration scheme for Coventry City Council (2003), nominated for the Stirling Prize; and the British Embassy in Bangkok (2008).

MacCormac was President of the RIBA in 1991-1993 and was knighted in 2001. The practice changed its name to MJP Architects in 2008 and closed in 2022.

Alexander Beleschenko (b 1951) trained at various art colleges before specialising in architectural stained glass at Swansea School of Art (1978-1979). He earlier worked with Richard MacCormac at the Garden Quad, St John's College, Oxford in 1993. Other works include windows at Winchester County Council Offices (1992) and a floor piece for the Senedd Cymru, Cardiff (2006).

THE JUBILEE LINE EXTENSION
The Jubilee line, originally known as the Fleet line, was constructed between 1971 and 1979. Running between Stanmore in north-west London and Charing Cross, the aspiration was that this should be the first phase of a line which would connect north-west and south-east London. The development of London Docklands and Canary Wharf the following decade brought a new impetus for the line’s onward extension, helped by a £400 million contribution offered by the developer of Canary Wharf, Olympia and York (O and Y). The extension was to take the Jubilee line from Green Park to Canary Wharf and on to Stratford via the Greenwich Peninsula.

The JLE project team was established in 1990 under the directorship of Russell Black (replaced by Hugh Doherty in 1992), with Roland Paoletti appointed architect in charge. Paoletti (1931-2013) was born in London of Italian extraction. He worked for Sir Basil Spence on the building of the British Embassy in Rome and for the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, before moving to Hong Kong in 1975 to become architect in charge for the Mass Transit Railway Corporation. During this time he oversaw the design of 36 stations along three lines.

The JLE required 11 stations, eight providing interchanges with other lines; six being wholly new and four of these having accompanying bus stations; the five pre-existing stations required remodelling or extension. There was also to be a depot at Stratford Market to accommodate and service the rolling stock. Paoletti’s vision for the stations was one in which there was a seamless relationship between engineering and architecture. Each station was to have a unique identity but be unified by values of space, accessibility, navigational clarity and, where possible, the use of natural light. Certain standardised details were used across the line and a palette of materials including stainless steel and polished concrete gave the sense of a house style, while allowing for creativity in the design of individual stations. He assembled an in-house group of architects to take on the design of interchanges with rail termini at London Bridge and Waterloo, but for the other stations he invited a short-list of London-based architectural practices each to tender for the design of one station. The successful practices were paired with an engineering firm with whom they would work collaboratively to deliver the stations.

This approach meant the designs could be drawn up simultaneously; schemes for the 11 stations and depot were completed within two years. They were exhibited at the Architecture Foundation in September 1992 and received international interest and a warm critical reception; their evident quality helping consolidate support for the JLE and, importantly, boosting London Transport’s campaign for funding after O and Y’s (Olympia and York) collapse that same year.

The JLE was a project of exceptional ambition. As well as the stations, it required the construction of 16km of new line, 12.4km of it underground. It was the largest construction project in Europe in the late 1990s and the most complex tunnelling operation ever carried out below London. It had a phased opening in 1999 and was received to considerable acclaim, much of this down to the stations, whose architecture was the most visible expression of this major engineering feat. The JLE won the Civic Trust Urban Design Award, the judges describing it as ‘a string of gems of civic design’; and the Royal Fine Arts Commission named the JLE as Millennium Building of the Year, describing it as bringing ‘the highest standards of architecture to the transport services of London’ (Mitchell, Jubilee Line Extension, p 152).

Details

Jubilee Line underground station, 1994-1999. Architects, MacCormac Jamieson Prichard (partner in charge Richard MacCormac); civil engineers, Babtie; structural engineers, L G Mouchel and partners. Glass screen wall by Alexander Beleschenko in collaboration with Richard MacCormac and engineers Adams Kara Taylor/YRM Anthony Hunt.

MATERIALS AND STRUCTURE: the station is constructed using reinforced concrete with polished white concrete finishes, glass brick, polished steel and blue fritted* glass for the screen wall; light grey terrazzo flooring, and clear glass roofing. (*A treatment by which enamel is screen-printed onto glass before it is tempered to alter its translucency and refract light).

The main ticket hall takes the form of a reinforced concrete drum, approximately 20m in diameter. The intermediate concourse is a reinforced concrete cut-and-cover box structure, 16m deep and 40m long, its internal volume takes the form of a half cone, elliptical in plan, split down the centre and truncated at the top.

The lower sections of the station – the platform tunnels and the central lower concourse tunnel which serves them - were mined and are lined in concrete and stainless-steel panels.

PLAN: the layout of the station was dictated by existing infrastructure. The site is bounded to the immediate north by the C19 railway viaduct which carries the line into the high-level Waterloo East station 150m to the west. The site is bisected north/south by Joan Street and Hatfields, which pass under the viaduct.

Above ground, the station comprises three structures. From east to west these are: the ticket hall, on the corner of Blackfriars Road and The Cut; the eyelid-shaped skylight, parallel to the viaduct, which lights the sub-surface intermediate concourse; and the interchange serving Waterloo East station along the south side of the viaduct. Below ground, these structures are part of a series of connected spaces which progress from street to platform across four offset levels.

From the corner of Blackfriars Road and The Cut, steps lead down to the ticket hall: a sunken top-lit drum with back-of house offices and control room filling the rest of the quadrant-shaped footprint. Passengers are filtered to the rear of the building into a smaller top-lit lobby which leads via a bank of escalators down to the east end of the intermediate concourse; this is fed at its west end by escalators connecting it with the surface-level Waterloo East interchange.

The intermediate concourse is a spacious half-curved passage, lit from above by the street-level sky light. Three escalators, each in their own tunnel to avoid the footings of the viaduct piers above, lead to the lower level concourse, from where steps at either end descend to platform level and connect through into the platform tunnels, one eastbound, one westbound.

EXTERIOR: above ground, the special interest of the ticket hall is limited to the curved entrance portal, the building being intended to act as the base for an air-rights development above. The entrance takes the form of a tall, wide concrete frame, segmental in plan, addressing the road junction. Suspended beneath is a steel and opaque glass canopy which curves downwards over the descending entrance steps. A projecting London Underground roundel is supported on an arm cantilevered out from a lozenge shaped pier clad in opaque glass, which runs through the centre of the entrance composition.

Adjacent to the viaduct is the raised skylight over the intermediate concourse. The concrete walls, one curved, one straight, are approximately 4m high and clad in blue mosaic tiles. The shallow pitch of the roof is glazed and protected by a metal grille.

INTERIOR: the TICKET HALL is top lit by a central glass brick lantern, which is centred over a slender concrete shaft, wrapped at its base by a cylindrical glass brick booth for station staff. The ticket office windows which once lined the west side of the hall are now out of service. The walls are faced in stainless steel, opaque glass panels and polished concrete, the flooring is of pale buff terrazzo.

The ticket hall gives onto a circular lobby, top-lit by a drum of glass bricks, at the head of the escalators; here the wall treatment changes to coursed fair-faced concrete, laid in wide and narrow bands.

At the foot of the escalators the INTERMEDIATE CONCOURSE provides a dramatic thoroughfare. The space is four storeys high, top-lit, and with a 40m long, curved and canted screen of tessellating triangular blue glass tiles held by stainless steel ‘spiders’ connected to a steel frame behind. The tiles are fritted to graduate their opacity, moving from darker blue at the base to a lighter blue near the roof. Just beneath the roof, tapered concrete beams span the top of the void. The opposing wall, faced in coursed, polished concrete, has three arched portals leading into raked escalator tunnels which descend to the lower concourse. Passengers travelling up from this lower concourse have a framed view of the glass screen which resembles a starry sky when seen from below.

The LOWER CONCOURSE is a tunnel of 9m diameter. The floor level drops at either end, with pairs of steps filtering around a pylon on a lozenge plan, illuminated at the top. The curved walls of the tunnel are clad in steel panels; there are steel balustrades and battered portals of polished concrete leading to the escalators and platform tunnels. The platform tunnels run parallel to north and south. They have a bolted precast concrete segmental lining, left exposed as the surface finish. There is an illuminated frieze carrying the name of the station and a continuous resting bench built-in against the wall. As with all JLE stations, there are glazed screens with sliding doors along the platform edge (excluded from the Listing).

WATERLOO EAST INTERCHANGE
The Waterloo East mainline interchange is a curved steel and opaque glass wall formed of steel ribs and struts on a low plinth. It wraps the south side of the C19 railway viaduct, curving upwards to shelter the mainline platform A above. The internal wall is the exposed C19 iron and brick structure of the viaduct. At the far end is a stair leading up to platform A.

The interchange continues below the arches of the viaduct and up onto the platforms above but these areas do not form part of the listed building (except the canopy over platform A which is contiguous with the structure of the interchange).

NOTE ON SPECIAL INTEREST: the special interest of Southwark underground station relates to its success as an integrated work of architecture and civil engineering, expressed most fully in a series of public-facing spaces. Above ground, the building comprises the ticket hall (its primary interest resting in the entrance portal), the skylight over the intermediate concourse and Waterloo East interchange.

Pursuant to s1 (5A) (b) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the ticket barriers; standardised lift and escalator plant; tracks, rails and signalling infrastructure; glazed screens with sliding doors; interiors of back-of-house operational and maintenance spaces; and plant or operational equipment are not of special architectural or historic interest, however any works which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require LBC and this is a matter for the LPA to determine.

MAPPING NOTE: the map forming part of this List entry gives a general indication of the extent and position of the described station below ground (the above ground extent of the station is limited to the ticket hall, the skylight over the intermediate concourse, and the Waterloo East interchange). It does not define the extent of the listed building or define the extent of the building’s special interest. The mapping of the below-ground elements is based on published MJP drawings of the station’s footprint and for clarity the west-bound platform tunnel is not shown.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 24 November 2025 to amend the name and description

Sources

Books and journals
New Connections: New Architecture, New Urban Environments and the London Jubilee Line Extension (2001),
Bennett, D, The Architecture of the Jubilee Line Extension (2004),
Mitchell, B, Jubilee Line Extension, from concept to completion (2003),
Powell, K, The Jubilee Line Extension (2000),
'Southwark Station, Jubilee Line Extension, London Underground in Architects' Journal, ,Vol. 206, (18-25 December 1997), p. 44
Rhapsody in Blue in Building, ,Vol. 263, (5 June 1998), pp. 64-67
Light at the end of the Line in Country Life, ,Vol. 263, (4 November 1999), pp. 108-113
Sights at the end of the tunnel in The Times, ,Vol. , (2 March 1999), p. 18
Lawrence, D, Underground Architecture (1994), p. 186-189
A Cut Above in The Architectural Review, ,Vol. 207, (1 June 2000), pp. 46-50
Lightning Conductor in Building, ,Vol. 260, (7 April 1995), pp. 52-56

Websites
Saint, A, 'The Jubilee Line Extension' in London Review of Books, vol. 22, 20 January 2000, accessed 23 August 2024 from https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n02/andrew-saint/diary

End of official list entry