Our Design Idiom celebrate's London Underground's design heritage, and brings good design back to the forefront of decision-making and to the heart of all new projects, regardless of scale.
Strategy
The London Underground is the oldest metro system in the world, and its iconic designs, from the roundel brand to the tube map, were commissioned by Frank Pick, the managing director of London Underground in the 1920s. We won the commission for the London Underground Station Design Idiom, an opportunity to celebrate the organisation’s design heritage and bring good design back to the forefront of decision-making and to the heart of all new projects, regardless of scale.
The challenge was to balance the needs of the stations with those of commerce, identifying what makes a station feel like a station. We looked at lighting, spatial effects, signage, colours and materials, and at accessibility and how people move through spaces.
At Oxford Circus, we’re opening up the station to reveal its perfectly circular form and removing all clutter, including the gateline. A halo of natural light will be filtered in, and branding and art will decorate the walls and ceilings. With the fundamental structure revealed and following our ‘From Platform to Pavement’ principle, we can then shift the focus to making the underground spaces flow better and the ground-level spaces connect better.
Our work at Camden Town involves injecting the features that make this corner of London memorable into the extended station. We’ve put a great deal of thought into how to design the ‘tidemark’ between the original and the new parts of the station, and as part of this, we’re proposing music-focused retail and a performance venue in the disused vent shaft.
Sustainability
The Design Idiom outlines a philosophy of ‘designing for the future’ that will improve maintenance and long‐term use of stations, thereby reducing whole‐life costs. By embracing new technologies and understanding their benefits, we can create well-designed stations which will be better for staff and better for customers, far into the future.
Team
