Top Ten London Architecture Utilities

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top ten London utilities

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Greenwich Hospital

architect	Sir Christopher Wren
location	on the river Thames at Greenwich, south-east London
date	1696 to 1715 Not to be confused with Wren's Greenwich Observatory, 1675-1676.
style	English Baroque
construction	masonry
type	Hospital

The Greenwich Hospital in London was founded in 1694 as the Royal Naval Hospital for Seamen.
It is a Royal Charity for the benefit of seafarers and their dependents, with the Secretary of State for Defence acting as the Crown's sole Trustee.
The hospital was established as a residential home for injured sailors, on the model of Les Invalides and the Chelsea Hospital. The charity now funds sheltered housing for former Royal Navy personnel and the Royal Hospital School at Holbrook in Suffolk.
The hospital occupied its prime riverside site on the south bank of the river Thames in Greenwich, London for over 170 years, closing to pensioners in 1869.
It was subsequently occupied by the Royal Naval College until 1998 when the site was opened to the public and the main buildings transferred to academic uses. The principal occupant is now the University of Greenwich.

St. Pancras Station

architect	William Henry Barlow with R. M. Ordish. Hotel at front Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
location	central London
date	1864 - 1868
style	NeoGothic (After Lord Palmerston vetoed Scott's Gothic designs for the Foreign Office) "At St Pancras, however, Scott got his chance. This time he decided to play down the Italian element. The polychromy is still there, But the skyline is no longer rectangular but syncopated, no longer Italian but Dutch or Flemish; and some of the details are Early English or Early French. The Cloth Hall at Ypres is the origin of the station entrance tower; Oudenaarde town hall probably supplied the inspiration for his gabled and pinnacled hotel entrance; the mouldings around the great entrance are Early French; the first-floor oriel windows incorporate distant echoes of Bishop Bridport's tomb at Salisbury Cathedral; other windows just as clearly, are Anglicised Venetian. With a pedigree like that - Pugin, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc - now wonder Scott thought his design 'almost too good for its purpose'." J Mordaunt Crook, The Dilemma of Style, John Murray, London 1989 p93
construction	brick and steel 74 meter clear span
type	railway station. In popular culture a losing competition entry for the Westminster Palace Houses of Parliament.

London Underground

architect	various
location	Greater London and Chiltern, Epping Forest, Three Rivers, Watford
date	1863
style	various
construction	System length 408 km / 253 miles No. of lines twelve No. of stations 274 Daily ridership 2.671 million (approximately) Track gauge 1435 mm (4 ft 8½ in) Operator Transport for London
type	Electrified Metro Railway

Thames Barrier

architect	Rendel, Palmer and Tritton
location	Woolwich, east of London
date	1974-82
style	High-Tech Modern
construction	steel
type	surge tide barrier

The Thames Barrier is a flood control structure on the River Thames at Woolwich Reach in London. It is the world's second largest movable flood barrier after the Oosterscheldekering in the Netherlands.

Battersea Power Station

architect	Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
location	Battersea, on the Thames opposite Pimlico
date	1939
style	Art Deco
construction	steel-framed building with brickwork hung from the outside
type	Utility

Battersea Power Station, completed in 1939, was the first in a series of very large (for the era) coal-fired electrical generating facilities set up in England as part of the National Grid power distribution system then being introduced. The grade II listed building is being converted to a large commercial and entertainment complex as the centrepiece of a project to rejuvenate the area.

Paddington Station

architect	Isambard Kingdom Brunel with Matthew Digby Wyatt.
location	Paddington
date	1852 to 1854
style	NeoClassical
construction	cast iron and brick
type	Utility

Paddington station is a major National Rail and London Underground station complex in the Paddington area of London, England. The site is a historic one, having served as the London terminus of the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the current mainline station dates back to 1854, and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The site was first served by Underground trains in 1863, and was the original western terminus of the Metropolitan Railway, the worlds first underground railway.

Continental Train Platform

architect	Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners with Anthony Hunt Associates, Engineers
location	Waterloo Station, York Road London SE1 7ND
date	1993
style	High-Tech Modern
construction	steel and glass
type	railway station

Best known for its 400-meter-long curved glass roof, Grimshaw's International Terminal at Waterloo Station provides airport-quality accommodation for the London end of the Eurostar trains services through the Channel Tunnel to Paris and Brussels.

The length of the trains and the curve of the five new tracks dedicated to the Eurostar service at the side of the existing station determined the geometry of the new building, including the distinctive roof.

Stansted Airport

architect	Norman Foster
location	Stansted, Surrey, south of London
date	1991
style	High-Tech Modern
construction	steel column modules
type	airport

Stansted Airport (IATA: STN, ICAO: EGSS) is a large passenger airport with a single runway and hub for a number of major European low-cost airlines. Stansted is the fourth busiest airport in the UK after London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Manchester International Airport. It is located in the Uttlesford District of the English county of Essex about 30 miles (48 km) north-east of London. The airport is owned and operated by BAA. It is the third-busiest airport in the London area after Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport.

Canary Wharf Tube Station

architect	Norman Foster
location	Canary Wharf station on the Jubilee Line, between Canada Water and North Greenwich
date	Opened 1999
style	High-Tech Modern
construction	concrete, steel, glass
type	Transport

The tube station was intended from the start to be the showpiece of the Jubilee Line Extension, and its design was awarded in 1990 to the renowned architect Sir Norman Foster. It was constructed in a drained arm of the former dock, using a simple "cut and cover" method to excavate an enormous pit 24 metres (78 feet) deep and 265 metres (869 feet) long. The resulting large volume of the interior has led to it being compared to a cathedral, and it has even been used to celebrate a wedding. However, the main reason for the station's enormous proportions is the great number of passengers predicted — as many as 50,000 daily.