Open House 2013:Old Ford Waste Water Recycling Facility
This year's London Open House allowed access to part of the Olympic Park I'd walked past a hundred times but never previously been inside. The Old Ford Nature Reserve used to be tucked away near the end of the Greenway, adjacent to the Lea, just across the water from the Big Breakfast House. It was overseen by the London Wildlife Trust, but permanently locked to provide a protected refuge for flora and fauna. And then the Olympics erupted nextdoor, literally nextdoor, with the main Stadium only 100 metres away. Unlike other greenspaces this one survived, but was swiftly appropriated for a scheme on the sustainability agenda. Water would be needed on site to flush the toilets and to keep the meadows blooming, so a recycled water facility hit the spot. The plan was to siphon liquid muck from the adjacent Northern Outfall Sewer, convert it to non-potable water and pump this out through a network of pipes across the entire Olympic Park. Achievement unlocked. A group of small buildings was created around an existing borehole, including larch-coated storage tanks and a cluster of cubes panelled with self-corroding steel. We were shown round these in small groups, discovering that one cube contains an educational visual aid consisting of six water tanks and a flushing toilet. The main recycling facility is the size of a minor church, although the tower is in no way ornate and the walls are timber-panelled with stone gabions. Inside we clumped up the metal staircase to stare down into the filters, then clumped back down to walk through the pumproom. Compared to what I've seen at Abbey Mills this is wholeheartedly modern stuff, more like a microbrewery than a temple, and all powered by a computer system in the small office beyond. And yes, the nature reserve survives, bar the small area by the gate where staff park their cars. The nature trail packs in grassy thickets and a new pond, but is only 90 seconds long and will only be seen by schoolchildren invited by Thames Water. It's good to know that the Olympic Park's water supply has a sustainable future, but who knew that all those wild flowers we adored last summer were probably fuelled by purified sewage? [3 photos]
Open House 2013:Sir Ludwig Guttmann Health and Wellbeing Centre When Olympic and Paralympic athletes fell ill last summer, they nipped off to the polyclinic in the East Village for treatment. This brand new facility had to meet two exacting briefs - first to cope with a brief inundation from the world's elite, then to act as a long-term health centre for East London. As part of Open House we got to meet the trio who squared the circle. That's the architect, the London 2012 centre manager and, perhaps most importantly, the man who has to make the building viable in legacy. He led us round, showing what will or might go where, and beardy architect Mark chipped in his rationale along the way. The site restricted his design somewhat, tucked into a dead-end triangle with railways on two sides. Nevertheless this is an imposing building on four levels, built from off-white bricks and with a sharp spike piercing the sky above the main entrance. A pharmacy will face the street on Liberty Bridge Road, beyond which is a tall atrium that hangs the building together. A staircase scissors invitingly up to the top floor, encouraging a bit of healthy climbing, although there are adequate lifts for those who can't manage. A GP's practice is lined up for the ground floor rooms, initially small but with room for expansion as the population of the Olympic Park grows. The future of the upper treatment rooms is less certain, the local NHS can't necessarily afford them, so it's the manager's job to find organisations who could and would be able to fill them. Nevertheless it's his hope that the public will make this place their own, maybe pop in for a communal coffee, especially the residents of north Stratford and south Leyton just across the railway. The name's a bit of a mouthful (Ludwig Guttmann was the first director of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and credited with launching the first paraplegic Games). But this is a fine modern building, light and airy and (as you'd expect) ecologically sound. The SLGHaWC opens properly in a couple of months, so let's hope it successfully sews itself into the local community as the next few years pass. And who knows, maybe one day you too will be treated in a room where a world class athlete was patched and healed. [3 photos]
Open House 2013:Dane's Yard & Strand East Tower
Meanwhile, over on Stratford High Street, not every Open House venue gets it right. Dane's Yard advertised itself in the programme as "10 min talk on the hour about the scheme to date and proposed development", then inexplicably ran 20 minute tours on the half hour instead. That angered a few people who'd turned up specially and suddenly found they had ages to wait, but thankfully the volunteers relented and led us inside anyway. Unfortunately they seemed to know virtually nothing about the site, and blustered vacuously on the way in. "This is some machinery from when it used to be a factory..." "this is some art..." "erm, yes". Thankfully in the exhibition space above the restaurant we met the architect, that's the lady in charge of the masterplan for a whole new corner of Newham, another Open House coup. She enthused about her plan to build an entire neighbourhood between the Three Mills Wall River and the River Lea with homes for 1200 and a commercial strip along the main road. You may have heard of this as the IKEA Village, although it's actually funded by an entirely parallel company and there'll be no furniture megastore on site. From the 3D model on display, expect lowrise apartments meshed with highrise towers, and three of the old industrial chimneys preserved as a nod to heritage. I was surprised to see a large Marriott hotel in the plans - does anyone really want to pay over the odds to stay overnight overlooking the Bow Flyover? But hurrah for the additional bridges that'll be built to knit this triangle of land into its surroundings, one of which will provide a busway from Bromley-by-Bow. I'd show you aphoto of the model, but the chief architect was absolutely insistent none were taken because final layouts rarely match initial plans. And I'd tell you more, but the leaflet we were given was a poor colour copy with white text on a red background and is therefore entirely illegible. I hope the reality that's built at Strand East is more impressive, because some of us have to live alongside.
Open House 2013:Gasholder No 8 And finally, in a completely different part of the capital, a restored Victorian gasholder. This was one of nine planted to the north of King's Cross in the late 19th century, ideally located beside the Regent's Canal for the delivery of coal. And here it would have stayed were it not for the arrival of the Channel Tunnel rail link and the complete redevelopment of the old goods yard for housing and office space. Down came the latticed girders and down came the 16 hollow cast iron columns, shipped off to Yorkshire for restoration. And recently they've been put up again, so recently that the last column only rose into place last Friday, and the final girder joined the circle earlier this week. The ultimate plan is to create an open green space in the centre, a humped lawn to encourage lying back and staring up at the circumference. At ground level will be a cobbled pathway, surrounded by a continuous colonnade supported by 150 fin pillars. You don't quite get the picture right now, standing on astroturf in the middle of the guideframe surrounded by an enormous building site. Three other gasholders, the famous Siamese Triplets, are being rebuilt close by but with apartments inside. There's no sign yet, but the estate's Energy Centre is already ascending alongside Gasholder No 8, creating a juxtaposition of power infrastructure old and new. Unlike most other Open House venues this one's open this weekend too, this as part of King's Cross Journeys, a two-day festival celebrating gritty Victoriana. That and thereopening (today!) of the piazza in front of King's Cross station, which is most definitely worth three cheers. One foot in the past, another firmly in the future, King's Cross's transformation still has a long way to run.
Today the New River runs no further than the reservoirs in Stoke Newington. But 400 years ago it ran three miles further, all the way to fields on the edge of London near the Angel. This final section became disused and was covered over in the early 20th century. But very little has actually been built over, so it's surprisingly easy to follow the route through Canonbury and Islington. Indeed as lost rivers go, this anniversary-celebrating canal is far less lost than most.
The 'Heritage' section of the New River Walk starts in Clissold Park. Ignore the two lakes to the north of the park, they're merely ornamental ponds on the line of the Hackney Brook. This stream was the last of the natural valleys the New River had to negotiate, thankfully shallow, but still requiring a Highbury-ward diversion. To continue on the New River Path walk halfway down the park to the Pump House kiosk, an original waterside building now serving drinks and sandwiches, and turn left. Hackney council have restored a short section of the New River through the heart of the park, fairly recently in fact, appearing suddenly within a fenced-off rockery. Two new footbridges have been built, each end marked with the seal of the New River Company and its motto "Et plui super unam civitatem" ("And I rained upon one city"). The waterway looks more river than canal on the corner by Clissold House - once the estate's mansion, now a Grade II listed cafe. And then the channel disappears again beyond an iron footbridge, because it isn't really flowing anywhere, in truth it's just another ornamental pond.
Another double-back leads to the New River Cafe, a 'proper' cornershop eaterie serving cappuccinos and salads. Look behind to discover a string of allotments along Aden Passage which precisely follows the original New River. There wasn't room to squeeze houses in here so they replaced the river bed with beds for beans and marrows instead. Indeed "there wasn't room to squeeze houses in here" explains much of what we're about to see. Petherton Road is a case in point. Houses were built down both sides of the New River in the 1880s - aspirational four storey terraces by modern standards - set back one road's width from the water's edge. When the New River was culverted this created a half-mile-long avenue with a space down the centre, once used for car parking, more recently turned over to grass. The local residents association are duly proud, and have thrown down woodchip in the central section to prevent their landscape feature being churned into mud. On Sunday they're holding a 400th anniversary picnic on Petherton Green, as it's now called, and will be making a flight of fishes to hang from the trees. A charming street, this.
The road continues, still wider than normal, past the Snooty Fox pub and Canonbury station. And then comes a rather splendid re-creation, New River Walk, a landscaped half-mile of which Islington council are very proud. A thin strip of green curves round from St Paul's Road to the Essex Road, overshadowed by trees, with what looks like the New River wiggling down the centre. But there are a few clues that it's not. For a start the water's not flowing, it's still, hence ideal for leafy reflection. More blatantly the channel's not straight, it bends and curves in an attractive manner whereas Myddleton's original channel cut direct. Transformation took place in the 1950s, creating a replica of a moorland stream with shrubs and rockeries of Westmoreland stone. Various sections have been upgraded since, adding wooden walkways and willowy pools, which so isn't the state of the open New River upstream. But never mind the authenticity, enjoy the ambience.
The most characterful part of New River Walk occurs near the end close to Canonbury Road. A small stone hut, thought to have belonged to a watchman, survives at a bend in the river. The channel here is the original New River, narrower as was the case in 1613, with its wooden banks (or revetments) restored. It's a favoured spot for waterfowl, and blimey if there wasn't a heron standing there clear as day keeping watch when I passed. This one's a long-standing visitor, it even attended the reopening ceremony (along with Princess Alexandra) when this particular section was restored in 1998. But that's it for water on the surface. The final section along Astey's Row is entirely dry, home to a linear rock garden (and that's Greenpeace HQ in the old boiler house alongside). Watch out for a map of the New River inscribed in the path at the far end - it's a bit faint, but a nice touch.
Essex Road is where civilisation hits. If you carry on walking down to Islington Green there's a statue to Sir Hugh Myddleton in the most prominent position possible where Upper Street divides. Islington really took to the New River's creator and the prosperity he brought to these fields, indeed he was namechecked again at the Myddleton Arms pub a few streets back. Sir Hugh's artificial aqueduct crossed obliquely beneath Essex Road by tunnel, then resurfaced alongside what's now Colebrook Row. When the Regent's Canal arrived 200 years later it therefore had to pass underneath the New River, which it does near the entrance to the Islington Tunnel. I'd previously thought that the linear parkland on top was just another garden square, and never previously twigged it was yet another manifestation of the New River. Again the houses are very pleasant here, that's just round the back of Angel tube. And don't forget to look up by Duncan Terrace to enjoy a cluster of 300 bird and bee boxes hugging the trunk of a tree, entitled 'Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven', part of the Secret Garden Project.
That really (really) is almost it. 28 miles down from Hertford and there's only a few hundred yards to go, cutting across City Road and Goswell Road a short distance downhill from the Angel. The New River would then have passed through what's now Owen's Field, a minor parklet alongside City and Islington College, where you could easily sit and eat your lunch or watch your dog perform without ever realising the history of this spot. A few more hints follow. Chadwell Street, named after the New River's springs in Ware, rises up to the glorious expanse of Myddleton Square. Beyond are River Street and Mylne Street, the latter named after the New River Company's Victorian chief engineer. And just off Rosebery Avenue is New River Head, the ultimate terminus of both water and walk. 399 years, 361 days, and counting.
If you live in North London, you probably have a direct connection to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. A series of interconnectingsewers runs parallel to the Thames, constructed in the 1860s by the great Joseph Bazalgette to divert the capital's effluent far downstream. His forward-thinking plans helped to ease chronic pollution and ill-health in the centre of town, and his fine Victorian craftsmanship is still delivering its cargo to Beckton 150 years later. Here Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer fed waste into giant storage tanks, then flushed it out into the Thames with the tide so it despoiled Erith and Tilbury instead. But what awaits at Beckton today is Europe's largest sewage works, a massive undertaking, which Thames Water were more than keen to show off at the weekend. What better way of spending two hours than a minibus tour of an essential, if rather smelly, public utility? [6 photos][aerial shot]
Beckton Sewage Treatment Works covers 250 acres, that's a lot of land, which thankfully was available here in abundance. Nobody lives nearby, there's only industry and river and a couple of shopping centres, one of which was built on the site of Europe's largest gasworks. If you're ever shopping at Gallions Reach take a look beyond the metal warehouses to the raised bank beyond - that's where the Northern Outfall Sewer arrives, and that's where our tour began. We met Derry, the man whose job it is to keep an eye on the larger detritus that Londoners flush down their drains. The coarsescreens remove everything larger than 5cm across, that's mostly rags and nappies, which we watched being removed by the automated machinery. If you're one of those people who chuck inappropriate stuff down the sink or toilet bowl, creating clothballs and fatbergs, a trip here might teach you better.
Further screens and channels remove grit and plastics, slowly thinning down the water to murk-with-floaty-bits. We got to see this less than pleasant liquid in a just-collected bottle when Alan gave us a run-through of the sedimentation process. He was great, as you'd expect from a long-term employee, dashing around from tank to tank to explain everything in twenty minutes flat. The aeration tanks are amazing, 14 lanes of bubbling sludge erupting like underground springs, only rather browner. They're powered by a series of blowers housed in stark concrete bunkers, like you'd imagine at a nuclear missile site. Opposite is an equally huge area of settlement tanks - those circular pools you often see at sewage works - here attracting the odd seagull in search of best-not-think-what. And then there are the final settlement pools and holding tanks, the latter in the process of being covered over to prevent escaping odour so we'll have been some of the last civilians to peer inside.
The resulting thick sludge used to be taken by tanker out into the North Sea and dumped, but environmental rules now prohibit this. Instead it ends up dried and baked and burnt in Beckton's very own Sludge Power Generator. This is a modern shiny building that incinerates 'cake', and helps to keep the site at least part-sustained with electricity. Further self-generation comes from the construction of a new wind turbine, very recently erected and fitted out. This stands beside a brand new extension to the sewage works, designed to increase treatment capacity by 60%, which if all goes to plan should be part-switched-on for the first time today.
One of the reasons this additional capacity is required is the construction of the Lee Tunnel. Thames Water are building this underground link to prevent storm discharge into the river at Abbey Mills, which is my local bit of the Lea so I'm well pleased. The Lee Tunnel will follow the Greenway from West Ham to Beckton, but at considerable depth because it's easier to dig through chalk not clay. We were taken to see the Beckton end, or at least the top of the overflow shaft, where cranes were delivering panels to be sunk 75m down to form the tunnel walls. This four mile storage tunnel is a massive undertaking, and interestingly almost completely uncontroversial unlike its big brother project, the Tideway Tunnel. Thames Water want to drive that beneath the Thames from Hammersmith to the Lea, at a cost of billions and with unwanted disruption to riverside amenities. They claim the Tideway Tunnel is essential, indeed they gave us all a glossy 24 page booklet (and a promotional pack of mints) to put their argument most strongly. Bazalgette would probably agree.
I do love Open House for the opportunity to get inside places you'd never normally get inside, and Beckton must be one of the biggest. It was truly fascinating to discover how London copes with its effluent issue, and to see just how many processes are required to clean that liquid from muck to clear. And the smell wasn't as strong as you'd expect, thankfully, although I might think twice about buying a flat downwind in Thames View Barking, just in case.
One of the best things about Open House weekend is the opportunity to go up things. See the City from above, get a new perspective on the capital. Several tall and tall-ish London buildings were open for public ascent, but many had long queues, and others required that you book in advance. I turned my sights on Docklands and pre-booked a couple, one the iconic One Canada Square, the other the adjacent Citigroup building. Floor thirty-something would be an excellent platform for a panorama, I thought, with a subtly different vantage point from each. So I booked one for Saturday and one for Sunday, because surely the weather wouldn't be miserable on both. As it turned out London's skies were grey throughout, with the sun only breaking through an hour after the last Open Houser had descended. Still, as an experience the buildings themselves were fascinating enough, let alone the opportunity to gawp towards the almost-horizon in all directions. [10 photos]
Getting into each building was a bit of a palaver, not least because neither had deigned to hang an Open House poster anywhere. I had to try to guess which door or desk was the meeting point, which in a financial jungle wasn't always obvious. The receptionist at One Canada Square was ice-cold at first until she'd checked I was indeed on the list, then charming but brusque after that. Citibank had considerably more security guards in evidence, and an additional demand for a wand-wave to check I wasn't smuggling illicit materials inside. Both buildings demanded to see photo ID before they'd let anyone in, which was one way of telling this wasn't the normally cuddly Open House visit, more a privileged look inside the UK's financial heartland. Step this way to the lifts...
One Canada Square: This is the building everybody knows as Canary Wharf, although that's the name of the entire estate, a strip across the top of the Isle of Dogs. One Canada Square is the silver tower with the pyramidal top, the one that belches steam from the summit, the building that rose here first. It's the second tallest building in the United Kingdom, beaten only recently by the Shard, and has 50 floors altogether (but no floor 13). We took one of the lifts that goes two-thirds of the way up from one corner of the foyer, and squeezed in, and sped off. As well as the current floor whizzing by, one display screen played adverts for desirable, slightly luxurious products, while the other listed the times of the next trains from Canary Wharf station, be that Jubilee or DLR, as a convenience for executives departing at the end of the day.
Open House tours visited the 30th and 39th floors, the first of these home to the Canary Wharf Marketing Suite. It's here that potential tenants, be they banks or retail, are brought for the soft sell. And it's damned impressive. A door in the lobby opens to reveal a 3D model of central and east London, a smaller version of that seen at the Building Centre in Camden. The Canary Wharf estate is illuminated to emphasise its proximity to the City of London, much closer than most might expect, and a string of transport links light up at the touch of a button. And that's just the antechamber. In the next room are some amazing models of Canary Wharf (no photos please), the largest depicting the entire estate in 3D. Future buildings (such as the imminent expansion into Wood Wharf) are shown only as cuboid envelopes, spaces within which the final structures will be confined. A second 3D model showed the shopping malls in some detail - constructed below ground we were told because the developers were Canadian and that's how they survive winter over there. And all the time the west window was calling us over to stare at the Thames and the City panorama beyond.
Up then to the 39th, a very different beast, home to kickstarter accommodation for high-potential technology firms. The owners call themselves Level39 and offer space for individuals and growing companies to gain a foothold in Docklands, with shared sandbox and conferencing facilities (and an awful lot of tubs of Smarties). One of the management team attempted to engage us with talk of start-up challenges and the internet of things, but we weren't really his target audience, we just wanted to take photos out of the window again. The Dome through a gap in the avenue of skyscrapers. In the opposite direction Cabot Square, Rotherhithe and the City. And over there in the distance "the Olympics" - it's funny how quickly Stratford has acquired this new name. After two decades of looking up at this giant from all over town, it was great to be able to look down the other way. [20 photos from Paul]
Citigroup Centre: You could have visited this one. The booking system had several spaces for several weeks, if only you'd thought or known to look. And the view would have been almost as good. This is the joint 4th tallest building in the United Kingdom, at 200m high, or at least part of it is. CitiBank have two buildings here, their original 18-storey HQ completed in 1999, and the monsterscraper attached immediately alongside. First our tour party were taken up the lesser tower to walk out onto the bridge that spans the atrium on the 15th floor. Woo, I got rather more of a hit of vertigo than I was expecting, for which I'm blaming glass walls and Bridget Riley. She contributed a trademark design of coloured shapes which tumbles in three layers down one side of the atrium, although I could only just about bring myself to check that it did indeed go all the way down. "Don't drop your cameras," warned the building manager, "you might kill someone."
And then we swapped to the other building and stepped into one of the fastest passenger lifts in the UK. This runs at eight metres a second, slowed down from the original ten because that made travellers mildly nauseous, but still enough to make your ears pop. Executives have their own express lift direct to floor 42, a few levels beneath the helideck that nobody ever uses because it's only accessible by ladder. We whizzed up as far as 37, for the good reason that it's not a trading floor, for the good reason that the Olympics are over. This is where LOCOG had their offices, the hub of all that planning for London 2012, now a sweep of empty desks awaiting fresh tenants. No photographs of the interior, urged the security guard despatched to follow us around, and one look in her icy eyes meant we didn't argue.
Thankfully exterior photographs were encouraged, and we moved around the perimeter of the floor to gain fresh perspectives on London. Most were similar to those I'd seen at One Canada Square the day before, but with a different arrangement of neighbouring towers obscuring different bits of the view. The view to the east was better, with the lack of development across most of the North Greenwich peninsula plain to see. Greenwich Park was a splash of green, with the Old Royal Naval College facing almost dead on, and the observatory's hill reduced to a trifling contour. LOCOG's view of the Olympic Park must have inspired many a meeting, although I couldn't help thinking BBC4's sitcom Twenty Twelve would have fitted these offices perfectly. But we spent longest staring towards central London, towards a much more imaginative forest of skyscrapers than that which inhabits Canary Wharf. The Gherkin, Shard and Cheesegrater still have pizazz that One Canada Square does not, not even close up at almost-pyramid level. Well, that's my view.
If TfL ever want passengers to stop moaning about the service they receive, perhaps they should invite every one of us to take a behind the scenes tour. An opportunity to see what goes on while we're not looking - the maintenance, the preparation, the dedication and the effort that aim to make sure each journey goes right. Yesterday 300 people were given the opportunity to discover how the Jubilee line keeps running, thanks to London Open House. The gates to the Stratford Market Depot were thrown open, just briefly, for a look around the interior and exterior. Here, take a lookat whatyou missed.
Stratford Market Depot covers an extensive patch of land between Stratford High Street and the Greenway. It was built in the late 1990s when the Jubilee line was extended, making available 45 separate sidings for the storage and maintenance of trains. Most are outside, the remainder housed in a giant parallelogram-shaped building (that's if viewed from above, the cross-section is rather more curved seen from side on). It's won awards, mainly for its 'geometrically pure' steel roof, clad with a double skin of aluminium and supported by rows of tree-like columns. Many centuries ago the depot site was home to a Cistercian abbey, which caused problems during construction when its cemetery was disturbed, and still means that the digging of deep foundations is not allowed.
This was a hi-vis visit, with every Open Houser togged out in orange zip-up tabard. One of the Jubilee line's operational bosses gave us the safety talk, and showed us a 'day in the life' video to set the scene. Trains shoot off from the sidings one-by-one from four thirty in the morning, with 57 in use during the height of the timetable. Nine come back during the off-peak for maintenance and fitting, some for an intensive once-over, others for more long term upgrades and renewal. Some of the overhauls resemble Formula 1 pitstops, with teams of workers moving in to work on each carriage simultaneously. For others an entire train is raised by crane several feet into the air, technology required because it wasn't appropriate to construct inspection pits on an ecclesiastical site.
For starters we were led up onto the viewing platform that runs along the northern end of the main shed. We started at 45, where some of the daily fit-outs take place, and worked our way along to 35 which is a pitlane for more serious maintenance. The roof was indeed fantastic, a forest of green rods supporting the area of two football pitches with minimal central support. Our guides were two staff who work on the maintenance side within the depot, and hence were extremely knowledgeable about which electronic system did what, which tool plugged in where, and why the tracks inside the depot were organised precisely as they were.
The outdoor track layout is much more complex, although essentially branchlike with just one main access from the main railway. Shunting movements here can be quite complex, indeed zigzagging a train across to the farthest test track can take it out of service for a couple of days. This being Saturday there were quite a few parked-up trains, and not a great deal of maintenance going on. The Control Tower was occupied, so we didn't get in there, but you can see this curvaceous sentinel from a passing Jubilee line train - watch out for the small external garden. You can also see the tinyhalt at the southern end of the depot where staff can nip on or off from the driver's cab - we didn't get that far.
Our tour rounded off with the chance to walk along one end of the main shed's floor. The concrete walkway passed shelves of couplings and various stabled train sets. We got to see the ultra-modern lathe that scrapes beneath suspended carriages to keep them trim, and to look up close at an overhauled bogie that'll be attached under a train by Monday lunchtime. More fun, we entered a carriage with all its seats tipped up to reveal the "Danger Electrical Hazard" wires and boxes underneath - I shall never sit on Jubilee moquette in ignorance again. And then we got to walk out through the emergency door in the front of the driver's cab down a drawbridge-style set of steps. If you ever get to do this on the Jubilee line proper, maybe in the depths of a dark tunnel, my advice is to duck as you exit to avoid hitting your head.
A fascinating hour in a most impressive space and, like I said, a sharp reminder that if the Underground ever breaks down, it's not because nobody tried. London's railways run only thanks to careful planning and teamwork - indeed they worked so well during the Olympics that the Jubilee carried twice as many passengers as usual without even creaking. We said our thanks on the way out, and the team said their thanks to us with a special party bag. I now have a full colour 36-page guide to Stratford Market Depot, rammed with more technical facts than any train nerd could ever need. I also have a special Stratford Market Open Day 2013 badge and biro and, even more excitingly, a commemorative mug (currently full of tea).
Departing from the venue, of course by Jubilee, the driver paused at West Ham to reprimand some late arrivals for attempting to hold the doors open. He launched into a spiel about how sensitive the doors were, and how excessive pressure can move them out of alignment and stop the train from working. And that's precisely what I'd heard from the maintenance chief in the depot half an hour earlier, about how the magnetic door opening system operates on tolerances of only about 3% so a tiny five millimetre shunt can really mess things up. And it took a depot visit to ram that point home, rather than just sighing every time a driver launches into yet another moan about leaning on the doors. Like I said, maybe we should all go behind the scenes at least once to get a fresh perspective on our daily commutes. I'm sure there'd be queues.
Open House 2013: Old Ford Waste Water Recycling Facility
When Olympic and Paralympic athletes fell ill last summer, they nipped off to the polyclinic in the East Village for treatment. This brand new facility had to meet two exacting briefs - first to cope with a brief inundation from the world's elite, then to act as a long-term health centre for East London. As part of Open House we got to meet the trio who squared the circle. That's the architect, the London 2012 centre manager and, perhaps most importantly, the man who has to make the building viable in legacy. He led us round, showing what will or might go where, and beardy architect Mark chipped in his rationale along the way. The site restricted his design somewhat, tucked into a dead-end triangle with railways on two sides. Nevertheless this is an imposing building on four levels, built from off-white bricks and with a sharp spike piercing the sky above the main entrance. A pharmacy will face the street on Liberty Bridge Road, beyond which is a tall atrium that hangs the building together. A staircase scissors invitingly up to the top floor, encouraging a bit of healthy climbing, although there are adequate lifts for those who can't manage. A GP's practice is lined up for the ground floor rooms, initially small but with room for expansion as the population of the Olympic Park grows. The future of the upper treatment rooms is less certain, the local NHS can't necessarily afford them, so it's the manager's job to find organisations who could and would be able to fill them. Nevertheless it's his hope that the public will make this place their own, maybe pop in for a communal coffee, especially the residents of north Stratford and south Leyton just across the railway. The name's a bit of a mouthful (Ludwig Guttmann was the first director of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and credited with launching the first paraplegic Games). But this is a fine modern building, light and airy and (as you'd expect) ecologically sound. The SLGHaWC opens properly in a couple of months, so let's hope it successfully sews itself into the local community as the next few years pass. And who knows, maybe one day you too will be treated in a room where a world class athlete was patched and healed. [3 photos]
Open House 2013: Dane's Yard & Strand East Tower
And finally, in a completely different part of the capital, a restored Victorian gasholder. This was one of nine planted to the north of King's Cross in the late 19th century, ideally located beside the Regent's Canal for the delivery of coal. And here it would have stayed were it not for the arrival of the Channel Tunnel rail link and the complete redevelopment of the old goods yard for housing and office space. Down came the latticed girders and down came the 16 hollow cast iron columns, shipped off to Yorkshire for restoration. And recently they've been put up again, so recently that the last column only rose into place last Friday, and the final girder joined the circle earlier this week. The ultimate plan is to create an open green space in the centre, a humped lawn to encourage lying back and staring up at the circumference. At ground level will be a cobbled pathway, surrounded by a continuous colonnade supported by 150 fin pillars. You don't quite get the picture right now, standing on astroturf in the middle of the guideframe surrounded by an enormous building site. Three other gasholders, the famous Siamese Triplets, are being rebuilt close by but with apartments inside. There's no sign yet, but the estate's Energy Centre is already ascending alongside Gasholder No 8, creating a juxtaposition of power infrastructure old and new. Unlike most other Open House venues this one's open this weekend too, this as part of King's Cross Journeys, a two-day festival celebrating gritty Victoriana. That and the reopening (today!) of the piazza in front of King's Cross station, which is most definitely worth three cheers. One foot in the past, another firmly in the future, King's Cross's transformation still has a long way to run.
One of the reasons this additional capacity is required is the construction of the Lee Tunnel. Thames Water are building this underground link to prevent storm discharge into the river at Abbey Mills, which is my local bit of the Lea so I'm well pleased. The Lee Tunnel will follow the Greenway from West Ham to Beckton, but at considerable depth because it's easier to dig through chalk not clay. We were taken to see the Beckton end, or at least the top of the overflow shaft, where cranes were delivering panels to be sunk 75m down to form the tunnel walls. This four mile storage tunnel is a massive undertaking, and interestingly almost completely uncontroversial unlike its big brother project, the Tideway Tunnel. Thames Water want to drive that beneath the Thames from Hammersmith to the Lea, at a cost of billions and with unwanted disruption to riverside amenities. They claim the Tideway Tunnel is essential, indeed they gave us all a glossy 24 page booklet (and a promotional pack of mints) to put their argument most strongly. Bazalgette would probably agree.
One of the best things about Open House weekend is the opportunity to go up things. See the City from above, get a new perspective on the capital. Several tall and tall-ish London buildings were open for public ascent, but many had long queues, and others required that you book in advance. I turned my sights on Docklands and pre-booked a couple, one the iconic One Canada Square, the other the adjacent Citigroup building. Floor thirty-something would be an excellent platform for a panorama, I thought, with a subtly different vantage point from each. So I booked one for Saturday and one for Sunday, because surely the weather wouldn't be miserable on both. As it turned out London's skies were grey throughout, with the sun only breaking through an hour after the last Open Houser had descended. Still, as an experience the buildings themselves were fascinating enough, let alone the opportunity to gawp towards the almost-horizon in all directions. [10 photos]
One Canada Square: This is the building everybody knows as Canary Wharf, although that's the name of the entire estate, a strip across the top of the Isle of Dogs. One Canada Square is the silver tower with the pyramidal top, the one that belches steam from the summit, the building that rose here first. It's the second tallest building in the United Kingdom, beaten only recently by the Shard, and has 50 floors altogether (but no floor 13). We took one of the lifts that goes two-thirds of the way up from one corner of the foyer, and squeezed in, and sped off. As well as the current floor whizzing by, one display screen played adverts for desirable, slightly luxurious products, while the other listed the times of the next trains from Canary Wharf station, be that Jubilee or DLR, as a convenience for executives departing at the end of the day.
Citigroup Centre: You could have visited this one. The booking system had several spaces for several weeks, if only you'd thought or known to look. And the view would have been almost as good. This is the joint 4th tallest building in the United Kingdom, at 200m high, or at least part of it is. CitiBank have two buildings here, their original 18-storey HQ completed in 1999, and the monsterscraper attached immediately alongside. First our tour party were taken up the lesser tower to walk out onto the bridge that spans the atrium on the 15th floor. Woo, I got rather more of a hit of vertigo than I was expecting, for which I'm blaming glass walls and Bridget Riley. She contributed a trademark design of coloured shapes which tumbles in three layers down one side of the atrium, although I could only just about bring myself to check that it did indeed go all the way down. "Don't drop your cameras," warned the building manager, "you might kill someone."
This was a hi-vis visit, with every Open Houser togged out in orange zip-up tabard. One of the Jubilee line's operational bosses gave us the safety talk, and showed us a 'day in the life' video to set the scene. Trains shoot off from the sidings one-by-one from four thirty in the morning, with 57 in use during the height of the timetable. Nine come back during the off-peak for maintenance and fitting, some for an intensive once-over, others for more long term upgrades and renewal. Some of the overhauls resemble Formula 1 pitstops, with teams of workers moving in to work on each carriage simultaneously. For others an entire train is raised by crane several feet into the air, technology required because it wasn't appropriate to construct inspection pits on an ecclesiastical site.
