Whitechapel Station.

One of the largest rail projects in Europe, the £831m project at Whitechapel Station connects the city, Canary Wharf, West End and Heathrow Airport to commuter areas east and west of London. This major new interchange provides a world-class, affordable railway with high frequency, convenient and accessible services across the capital. It saw the complete rebuild of the existing station to include new Crossrail tunnels and platforms, connecting into the District and Hammersmith & City lines as well as the new London Overground line, providing vast improvements to the urban realm.

BakerHicks provided multi-disciplinary design services, including architecture, Building Information Modelling (BIM), civil and structural engineering, and mechanical, electrical and public health engineering for the station. Working closely with the Crossrail team and the main contractor, BBMV (the Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, VINCI Construction joint venture), they were instrumental in ensuring designs were in line with, and adhering to, all Crossrail and London Underground specifications and standards, whilst the station and lines remained in operation. 

The much-publicised project focused on the repair and overhaul of the original Victorian façade, and the construction of a modern ticket hall and concourse, the latter featuring a planted rooftop to offset some of the carbon emissions produced or embedded in the construction process. It also serves to improve air quality and reduce noise. Glass above the concourse allows daylight into the station and down to the platforms, and new lifts and escalators have also been installed.

BakerHicks also provided key enabling works to facilitate the new station configuration, as well as ventilation, cooling and emergency systems design, including an innovative underground staircase pressurisation system. This was unique in that there were no specific industry standards for underground pressurisation, so BakerHicks’ engineers worked closely with the Crossrail team to build their own standards. To achieve this extensive energy assessments and thermal analysis was carried out, ensuring the systems met safety requirements.

The station forms part of the Elizabeth line, which was the largest construction project in Europe, and runs for over 100 kilometres through central London, from Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east to Reading and Heathrow in the west, and has a total of 41 stations, including 10 major new stations and 26 miles of tunnels. A vital interchange station, Whitechapel connects the Hammersmith & City, District and London Overground lines, as well as the new Elizabeth line, providing travellers with improved transport links and increasing central London’s rail capacity by ten percent.