Liverpool Street Station faces a profound dilemma. Substantial investment is required to upgrade capacity and accessibility at Britain’s busiest rail terminus, yet funding depends on intensive commercial development within its constrained City of London site. A succession of schemes have proposed extensive demolition of the protected structure to make way for oversized office buildings, attracting sustained opposition from heritage bodies and commuter groups facing years of disruption. Against this backdrop, John McAslan + Partners advanced an alternative approach, contending that growth and conservation need not be mutually exclusive.
The landmark station, designed by Edward Wilson for the Great Eastern Railway and built in 1875, combined an office range with a vast trainshed spanning ten platforms, distinguished by ornate cast-iron columns. Enlarged in the late 19th century and remodelled in 1992 with a new light-filled concourse, both the Victorian trainshed and sympathetic twentieth-century elements are now listed, reflecting the site’s layered architectural history.
Clear principles
JMP’s proposal began with three clear principles: avoid demolition wherever possible, respect the station’s scale and setting, and enhance the cathedral-like concourse. Instead of inserting a tower through the heart of the building, offices are placed above it, in a low-profile structure with a curving roof that spans over the northern end of the trainshed. It delivers 700,000 square feet of workspace, at roughly half the cost of previous proposals.
Set back from the glass-roofed concourse and an adjacent grade II*-listed hotel, the addition is largely hidden from surrounding streets. The scheme retains another adjoining building threatened with demolition – 50 Liverpool Street – for access to the offices, preserving existing station entrances on Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate and the intimate scale of the historic city.
Architecturally, the new building is a contemporary counterpart to the existing fabric, conceived in the same spirit of engineering innovation. The vaulted form recalls both nineteenth-century trainsheds and a bowstring truss in the facade of an SOM-designed building across Exchange Square to the north.
Ingenuity and sustainability
The engineering strategy, developed with Expedition, is central to the concept. A series of tied parabolic arches bridge over the 90-metre-wide Victorian trainshed without loading its historic roof. From this lightweight steel frame, nine storeys of cross-laminated timber office floors would be suspended. Loads are carried by tall columns landing either side of the listed structure. By avoiding a deep transfer slab or columns driven through the trainshed, the scheme preserves daylight and sightlines within the station and the spatial drama of its interior. Crucially, the intervention is physically detached from the historic fabric, and therefore fully reversible.
Sustainability is embedded in the overall design strategy and material choices. Retaining the existing station avoids the carbon costs of demolition and reconstruction. The arched tension structure is efficient, and the encased timber floors reduce embodied carbon compared with conventional steel and concrete. Natural daylight and ventilation reduce energy use. A landscape strategy positions the station as a nature-connected urban gateway rather than a sealed commercial enclave. Planted walkways along the trainshed contribute to biodiversity while offering new public viewpoints.
Buildability is also critical; phased construction above a separating crash deck over the platforms could proceed with far less interference to daily operations than schemes requiring wholesale demolition, or the imposition of permanent structure between the tracks.
Priority for passengers
Comprehensive reordering of the concourse reduces congestion and simplifies movement between the street, platforms, and onward connections. Removal of the retail mezzanine declutters the space, restores clearer views along the trainshed and improves wayfinding. New escalators and lifts provide step-free access throughout. Upgraded waiting areas and a cycle hub support projected passenger growth.
Enhanced station facilities equal those proposed by other schemes, but by retaining the existing concourse, passengers will continue to enjoy sunlight and sky views through its high, glazed roof, while a cleaner, more ordered interior gives greater prominence to the station’s delicate ironwork. Ahead, the long platforms are illuminated by daylight funnelled down through slots in the offices and the glazed station roof.
Architecture as argument
JMP’s proposal reframed the debate about Liverpool station, offering a ‘win-win’ answer to a ‘win-lose’ problem. It was adopted and championed as the preferred option by national heritage organisations including SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the Victorian Society and the Twentieth Century Society.
The argument it makes applies beyond Liverpool Street Station. It asserts that capacity, accessibility and commercial viability do not have to come at the expense of heritage, civic responsibility or the passenger experience. By bridging over the past instead of building through it, the scheme offers a model for how major infrastructure in historic cities might evolve – adding new architectural layers that are careful and pragmatic, but with an elegance and ambition commensurate with the achievements of the past.
