Southwark station opened 25 years old today on 20th November 1999.
It's a lot of people's favourite station, architecturally.
There's no other station like it.
The platforms are much like many of the others on the Jubilee line extension, but the concourse between them is unique. Step through and you enter a long cylindrical space on two levels faced with unpolished stainless steel panels. At each end a sleek glass beacon divides two staircases up to a higher walkway - the upper lower concourse.
It's not always this empty but sometimes it is. From here three separate bores rise diagonally upwards, each with a solo escalator, like ascending into your own private firmament. The best bit is the intermediate concourse, a huge space with thin concrete ribs high above a beautiful curved blue wall. As if to prove how photogenic it is, when I turned up to take my photo another amateur with a big lens was earnestly waiting for me to get out of the way so he could take his shot.
Apparently the inspiration for the blue cone wall came from Karl Friedrick Schinkel's 1816 stage set design for ‘The Magic Flute’, according to architects (and when you see that, yes of course it did). The main set of escalators then climbs to a concourse lit by a circular skylight, beyond which is a drum-shaped ticket hall with a staff kiosk at its centre. Circles and curves are definitely the theme around here.
A final set of steps leads out onto Blackfriars Road. TfL HQ is just across the road so expect to find yourself amid a stream of lanyarded transport professionals. The strange thing about the surface building is that it's just a shell, even though planning permission was originally awarded for a 12 storey building on top. Even stranger is that construction of a 14 storey building finally starts this weekend, exactly 25 years on, with the station having to be closed over nine weekends between now and April. 400 student flats are on their way.
Perhaps Southwark's most unique feature is the separate exit into a mainline station, namely Waterloo East. It's not possible to exit onto the street here, only to pass through two gatelines (each watched over by a very bored member of staff) before climbing stairs to the platform of your choice. Southwark is the only tube station where paper platform tickets can still be bought and used, purely thanks to this peculiar interstitial.
Quirky, gorgeous, unfinished and unique, that's Southwark station 25 years on. Best celebrate this rare success because only four new tube stations have opened since.
