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The Elizabeth line may simply be the London Underground equal of an Oxford PPE graduate in the Tory cupboard: ie, a masterclass in failing upwards.
I say this as a result of the latest Tube line, which lastly opened in 2022 4 years late and laughably over price range, simply received an award. And not simply any award – a giant, illustrious award. The not-so-humble Lizzie line nabbed the Riba Stirling Prize, an annual tip-of-the-cap for architecture bestowed upon the greatest constructing in the UK. The “best building in the UK” – their phrases, not mine.
The first eyebrow-raising component of all this is, clearly, the time period “building”. The Elizabeth line – transporting 700,000 folks a day, and comprising 62 miles of observe and 26 miles of tunnels alongside a route that calls in at 41 stops because it traverses from Reading and Heathrow airport in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east – is an indeniable feat of engineering. But a feat of structure? With the greatest will in the world, I’ve by no means checked out the complete premise and thought, “Gosh, what an impressive… building.”
Even as I’ve descended underground to hurry off on the purple line, named in honour of and formally opened by the late Queen Elizabeth II, I can’t say I’ve ever actually seen the design, as such. No shade thrown: absolutely that’s the level in the case of infrastructure serving as workaday a objective as public transport? To stay inconspicuous, non-controversial, plain? London Underground traces exude, for the most half, a commendably distraction-free, “Nothing to see here!” vitality. The focus is, fairly rightly, on operate and an uncompromising dedication to readability – enabling the hundreds of thousands of folks utilizing it day by day to navigate their method round the 272-stop community and get to the place they need to go.
Plenty of the stations on the Elizabeth line are the identical as they ever have been anyway; the stretch eastwards past Liverpool Street already existed as a TfL Rail service from 2015 to 2022 earlier than the complete violet rebrand reclaimed it in the identify of group Crossrail. Thinking about the new run of stops in central London, in the meantime, I assume the phrases that spring to thoughts are… white? Curved? Spacious? Vaguely futuristic? Don’t get me mistaken: I’m not in opposition to the vibe. It’s like they took the Jubilee line – the second “youngest” member of the Tube household, with the newer extension sections accomplished in 1999 – and gave it some barely extra sci-fi tweakments befitting of the 2020s. But it nonetheless looks like a reasonably damning indictment of the present state of British architectural design if this was deemed the “best” that the whole nation has to supply.
Previous recipients of the Stirling Prize have included true architectural heavyweights: 30 St Mary Axe, higher referred to as the Gherkin (2004); the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh (2005); the Dame Zaha Hadid-designed Evelyn Grace Academy (2011); the pioneering Bloomberg European Headquarters in London, dubbed the world’s “most sustainable office”, full with dramatic brass ramp (2018).
I’m not the solely dissenter in the case of questioning the place the Lizzie line matches in with all that went earlier than: a quantity of outstanding voices, much more professional than mine, have questioned this 12 months’s prize allocation.
“What does the Stirling actually represent any more?” Ian Ritchie, the famend British architect behind tasks together with the multi-award-winning Susie Sainsbury Theatre and the Angela Burgess Recital Hall at London’s Royal Academy of Music, commented to The Times. While he recommended the Elizabeth line for its engineering infrastructure – “by all means give it to the engineers, that would show respect and help dissolve professional design apartheid” – he argued that the Tube line is “hardly evolutionary architecture”. He identified that the bits that will truly fall underneath the remit of “architecture” largely consist of “endless tiling over an excellent civil engineering project”.
Liverpool University professor Alan Dunlop, a earlier Riba award recipient, mentioned that this 12 months’s Stirling Prize shortlist was usually a “disappointing effort overall” in contrast with earlier contenders, and highlighted that the Elizabeth line, whereas a “solid infrastructure project”, is “neither green nor inspirational, missing Riba’s commitment to net-zero building and rewarding excellence in architecture”.
Riba, in the meantime, known as its chosen 2024 winner “monumental yet elegantly simple”, an outline that’s onerous to argue with. But it’s tough to not really feel upset for the different 5 shortlisted buildings – which, whether or not you take care of them aesthetically or not, are at the very least indisputably buildings. It’s undoubtedly a London-centric choice, a proven fact that has attracted its personal fair proportion of censure, with three of the nominees based mostly in the capital (Chowdhury Walk council housing, King’s Cross Masterplan and the National Portrait Gallery). The two shortlisted buildings additional afield have been Wraxall Yard, a derelict dairy farm transformed into totally accessible vacation lodging, and Park Hill section two. The latter is the newest section in the huge renovation of Sheffield’s Brutalist, concrete icon of a housing property – the largest listed constructing in Europe and the inspiration behind and setting for Richard Hawley’s critically acclaimed musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge. Any of these alternate options might arguably have made a extra worthy winner.
The Elizabeth line, for all that it has lastly come to marvellous fruition, is absolutely at the very least considerably blighted by its beleaguered historical past
But my actual beef is that the Elizabeth Line, for all that it has lastly come to marvellous fruition, is absolutely at the very least considerably blighted by its beleaguered historical past – a shocking instance of Britain’s seeming incapacity to finish any promised infrastructure mission in a well timed or economical style. The factor got here in £4bn – that’s 4 billion kilos – over price range! Bond Street station alone ended up costing £570m greater than initially projected! It took 13 years to perform and opened 4 years late! And even then, solely with a restricted service that pressured passengers travelling between Shenfield and Paddington to vary at Liverpool Street, and people travelling between Heathrow or Reading and Abbey Wood to vary at Paddington! It could also be totally functioning now, however that doesn’t erase the numerous delays and points that beset Crossrail from begin to (very late) end. In the phrases of a mom trying to stick to constructive parenting methods: ought to we actually be rewarding this sort of behaviour?
Perhaps it’s indicative of simply how low our expectations have dropped in the case of public transport in the UK – we’ll give absolutely anything an award at this level. So convey on the Stirling Prize 2025; I can’t wait to see HS2 topped greatest in present.
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