The Shard Tower in London

[pk]

Yep, tis a good view from the walkway between the station and Guy's hosp.

Some alarming scenes of massive diggers parked at 45 degree angles, and dust everywhere!!

 

[teuchter]

From the walkway:

From the top of the Guy's tower (through grubby windows):

Also from the top of Guy's while I'm at it:

 

[Gavin Bl]

great pics, thanks.

 

[temper_tantrum]

Woah, top stuff!

 

[Cid]

teuchter - i got told that the space Shunt is in is earmarked for a big retail development.

just what London needs, more fucking shops and the loss of a unique art space.

cunts (if true)

London Bridge arches... I hope to fuck not, those are amazing spaces.

 

[Crispy]

The london bridge arches will all be used and changed in the London bridge station redevelopment to come after the Shard. The concourse will move down to the Tooley Street level, with escalator access up to the platforms.

 

[Roadkill]

I think it's an excellent development. The Shard is a really striking building, and London Bridge station urgently needs the planned refurbishment since atm it's rather down at heel and not really coping with the amount of traffic using it.

 

[kyser_soze]

teuchter - i got told that the space Shunt is in is earmarked for a big retail development.

just what London needs, more fucking shops and the loss of a unique art space.

cunts (if true)

This argument 150 years ago:

'Top hatted railway developers want to turn simepl Tooley street in a railway station and must be stopped at all costs!!'

Are we trying say that a railway arch is a unique art space in London?

 

[teuchter]

This argument 150 years ago:

'Top hatted railway developers want to turn simepl Tooley street in a railway station and must be stopped at all costs!!'

Are we trying say that a railway arch is a unique art space in London?

Have you been in Shunt? It's enormous; I can't think of any other railway-arch spaces on that scale* in London, certainly not being used as art/performance spaces.

Of course, its not hard to see why it makes commercial sense to develop it.

*Except for the SeOne club which is in the arches in the next block along to the East. (Is this going too, then? Looks like it from the plan Crispy posted).

 

[Crispy]

Can anyone identify the location of Shunt in this floorplan?

The existing Underground entrance can be seen on the far left.

Ah, ok I get it, it's the many-pillar'd space immediately to the right. Well at least the space itself will be left intact. Can't quite read the caption on it there...

 

[quimcunx]

This argument 150 years ago:

'Top hatted railway developers want to turn simepl Tooley street in a railway station and must be stopped at all costs!!'

Are we trying say that a railway arch is a unique art space in London?

I think Shunt is a unique art space. We will be losing that. And replacing it with someone not in the tiniest bit unique.

 

[quimcunx]

Can anyone identify the location of Shunt in this floorplan?

Can you first of all identify anything on this plan? Like Tooley Street. It's too small for me to see.

 

[quimcunx]

I think it's an excellent development. The Shard is a really striking building, and London Bridge station urgently needs the planned refurbishment since atm it's rather down at heel and not really coping with the amount of traffic using it.

I think it is a striking building. I'm not sure what I think of the location though and I am now pissed off at losing Shunt.

 

[teuchter]

Can you first of all identify anything on this plan? Like Tooley Street.

Tooley St is the road running across the plan about a quarter down from the top.

 

[Crispy]

Ah, okay, I've figure it out now. Having looked at the location map on Shunt's website, it does indeed look like it'll be closing for the station redevelopment.

 

[quimcunx]

Well done Crispy.


Because even with Tooley street located I still wasn't going to have a clue. Not sure why I asked.

 

[teuchter]

Ah, okay, I've figure it out now. Having looked at the location map on Shunt's website, it does indeed look like it'll be closing for the station redevelopment.

I'm pretty sure it's quite a lot bigger than that.

More like this (very approximately)

Red is shunt, green is SeOne club.

 

[Crispy]

Well, whichever bit it is, it's going to go.

 

[Dan U]

I think Shunt is a unique art space. We will be losing that. And replacing it with someone not in the tiniest bit unique.

this.

maybe the Arts Council and Shunt will find somewhere else to go, i hope so as it is certainly unique and has loads of stuff going on there (some admittedly pretty shit but at least it's on somewhere)

 

[Crispy]

Those are the trains to Brighton and gatwick, big revenue earner for Thameslink, every 15 or 20 mines from v early as pointed out by Ackland. Jewel in their crown really, the bottleneck for them is also the Snow Hill Tunnel/Farringdon Junction - services split there to also allow trains into Moorgate.

The Moorgate branch will be closed soon though , so all southbound trains will run through the tunnel. No more bottleneck. It'll mean a much busier interchange at Farringdon though.

 

[lang rabbie]

Plan of shunt vaults - which shows that overall area wise Shunt occupies a space closer to what teuchter thought.

What confused everyone (including the developers' representatives) a good few years ago when trying to understand the plans during the "consultation" on the station reconstruction is that one of the conditions of the deal with English Heritage is to restore the full length of "The Vaults" as the main east-west route between the Tube station and the new north-south concourse.

As I understand it, as well as the eight (?) western bays closest to the Tube station which were spruced up at the time of Jubilee line construction and are currently occupied by the various posh deli stalls, National Rail will have to reconstruct in replica the five or six bays demolished less than fifteen years ago for the current escalator link up to the mainline concourse. These will then link into the remaining bays to the east which currently form the middle part of Shunt.

It looks as though the more conventionally arched northern and southern bits of Shunt become retailing.

 

[temper_tantrum]

So the main route between the Tube and the train station will be an elongated version of the current Vaults which are used for shopping? That's quite a narrow space, it gets horribly crowded during busy periods.

 

[lang rabbie]

So the main route between the Tube and the train station will be an elongated version of the current Vaults which are used for shopping? That's quite a narrow space, it gets horribly crowded during busy periods.

At the moment only the "nave" of the vaults is a through route. I'm assuming that the kiosks in the "aisles" either side will get dismantled and there will be replacement shopfronts facing onto the aisles where there are currently blank brick walls.

 

[teuchter]

Thanks for that, lang rabbie; now it all makes more sense to me.

Here is a plan of London Bridge pre-development, with the two long tunnels that pass underneath (Stainer Street and Weston Street) highlighted:

Here's the plan of the redeveloped vaults area as originally posted by Crispy:

And here (as far as I can make out) are are the current locations of Shunt (Red), the Dungeons (Green), and SEOne Club (Blue) superimposed. In yellow is the location of the escalators that currently take you up to the main concourse from the route through from the tube station. The two tunnels of Stainer and Weston streets are in purple again - they effectively cease to exist.

My estimation of the location of SEOne that I posted a couple of posts up now looks embarrassingly oversized. Anyone who's been in there knows how big it is, though, and seeing it take up just a small portion of that redeveloped site illustrates just what a massive area it is that's going to be opened up.


Does anyone know what all the arches under the station were originally used for? Just storage?

 

[temper_tantrum]

Great work Teuchter, thanks - I couldn't make head or tail of the original diagram! That makes it much clearer.

 

[teuchter]

It would be interesting to know how they are going to build that central bit that runs North/South roughly where the two tunnels currently are. Because they are obviously going to completely remove the existing brick supporting structures and replace it with new. Which is surely going to be a bit tricky to do when the structure is supporting an operating railway station.

 

[temper_tantrum]

One thing that I can't quite work out is the levels in the diagram. Is it all at ground level? Doesn't that mean that Shunt is overlaid with the shops in the Vaults?

Perhaps they are leaving the tunnel arches in situ? The central hall area of the proposed development seems to correlate with the location of the existing tunnels.

 

[Crispy]

Here's my guess:

The current station has 9 terminating platforms and 6 through. The new station will have 6 terminating and 9 through. Therefore, the first platforms to close will be the middle three. They'll demolish them right down to 'basement' level, then build the new bridge over to carry the tracks right through (this will join up with the new viaduct that expands the westbound capacity, if I understand things right). Access to the platforms will continue to be from above via the bridge.

Then they'll carry on closing, demolishing and rebuilding the other platform sections in groups of three/four. During all this time, access will be from above. Only when all the new bridges are in place will they start constructing the new concourse underneath them.

 

[teuchter]

One thing that I can't quite work out is the levels in the diagram. Is it all at ground level? Doesn't that mean that Shunt is overlaid with the shops in the Vaults?

It's all at street level (ie the level below the station concourse).

The shops in the Vaults are currently just in the side aisles. After the changes, these side aisles will be open, by the looks of it, with the shop fronts set into the side walls.

Perhaps they are leaving the tunnel arches in situ? The central hall area of the proposed development seems to correlate with the location of the existing tunnels.

I don't think so; you would see more columns and piers on plan, and that bit doesn't fully correlate with the location of the tunnels. Also, looking at the images posted earlier, there is no trace of the original arches there.

 

[temper_tantrum]

There's a net reduction in the number of platforms? Really? (Edited: That was to Crispy).