Canary Wharf Jubilee Line Station

Canary Wharf Underground Station in London is the network's largest single-line station, built inside a drained 19th-century dock. Designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 1999, the 300-metre structure occupies a 24-metre-deep pit within the former West India Dock. Its striking glass canopies funnel natural light deep into the subterranean concourse, which handles forty million passengers annually and equals the length of One Canada Square laid on its side.

London Β· from the walk β€œDocks to Dollars” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Canary Wharf Underground Station, Jubilee Place, London E14 5NY

How deep is the pit constructed for Canary Wharf Underground Station in London?

Look around you. Those sweeping glass canopies, that immense underground cavern... You're standing at the entrance to what is arguably the most extraordinary tube station in the world. Canary Wharf Jubilee Line Station, designed by Foster and Partners, opened in nineteen ninety-nine, and it remains both the largest single-line station on the entire London Underground network, and perhaps the most architecturally spectacular.......... But here's what makes this place truly remarkable. You are standing on top of maritime history... literally. This three hundred metre long station is built within the hollow of the former West India Dock, using cut-and-cover construction techniques. Can you imagine what this looked like two hundred years ago? West India Docks were built for goods from Caribbean slave plantations... sugar, rum, coffee and timber. Constructed between eighteen hundred and eighteen oh two, they were the First of the great docks built in nineteenth-century East London. The dock complex was the largest in the world, created by and for merchants trading in the Caribbean.......... And the name "Canary Wharf" itself? It came from a berth built in nineteen thirty-six for Fruit Lines Limited, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines, for the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade. Bananas and tomatoes from the Canary Islands... that's where the name stuck.......... Now, to build This station, engineers had to drain an entire arm of that old dock... then dig a pit twenty-four metres deep and two hundred and sixty-five metres long. And here's a detail most people walk right past. The station's underground structure is as long as Canary Wharf Tower is tall! If you could take One Canada Square and lay it on its side... it would fit Inside this station.......... The man who orchestrated all of this was not just Sir Norman Foster. The entire Jubilee Line Extension was the brainchild of an extraordinary figure... Romano Roland Paoletti, a British-Italian architect, best known for commissioning the award-winning designs of all eleven stations on the extension. The Architectural Review called him "the Medici of London Transport." He hired a Different world-class architect for each station... Foster for here, Hopkins for Westminster, Alsop for North Greenwich... creating what became one of the greatest acts of architectural patronage in modern Britain.......... Foster based the design upon previous work he'd done for the Bilbao metro, colloquially named "Fosteritos." Those arcing glass canopies you see above ground? They are the station's only visible signature, funnelling natural daylight deep into the concourse below. By concentrating natural light dramatically at these points, orientation is enhanced, minimising the need for directional signage.......... And this cathedral of concrete has attracted more than commuters. The size of the interior has led to it being compared to a cathedral, and it has even been used to celebrate a wedding. It's also a Hollywood favourite... Danny Boyle's twenty oh two film Twenty-Eight Days Later was filmed here, and in April twenty sixteen, the station doubled as an Imperial base in the Star Wars film Rogue One. Those shoots took place between midnight and four a.m., when the station was closed.......... In a twenty thirteen poll conducted by YouGov, this was voted the "Most Loved" tube station in London. And just five years after opening, a study concluded that the new station had increased surrounding land values by two Billion pounds.......... So next time you ride an escalator into these depths... remember. Beneath the glass towers of modern finance, you're descending into the bones of an empire's maritime trade... a dock that once held six hundred ships, now holding forty million passengers a year.

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