News
Sunday 1 June 2008
St Pancras Station reborn for 21st Century Britain
The monumental transformation of one of Britain's most loved iconic Victorian buildings into a gateway to the world was the fascinating subject of a public lecture organised by the Nottingham and Derby Society of Architects and the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University.
The event, in the Sir Harry and Lady Djanogly Lecture Theatre on the university's City campus, attracted a large audience keen to learn from Alastair Lansley, Chief Architect for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, how St Pancras International had taken shape.
St Pancras International has won two awards this year, a RIBA Award and a RIBA London & English Heritage Award for a Building in a Historic Context.
Built 21 years before the Eiffel Tower, St Pancras was heralded as the wonder of the age, the largest iron structure in the world, which was copied in Dresden and Bombay.
Alastair Lansley described how a building, which was very high-tech in its day, had become the 21st Century international station for London, with 250 kilometres of new track, a quarter of which was tunnelled underground, and 144 bridges, creating the high speed rail link to the Channel Tunnel.
The refurbished station, with its new shopping malls, is now London's best connected railway station with platforms extended to accommodate the long Eurostar trains.
Alastair Lansley, who also worked on the Liverpool Street Station and Ashford International rail projects, said: "I have made railway stations my life because they are the last true vestiges of public space. St Pancras is all about volume. It really does raise the spirit and has done it in really grand style."
ENDS
Notes to editors:
The event was sponsored by John E. Wright.
Press enquiries please contact: Dave Rogers, Press Officer, on Tel: 0115 848 8782, or via email: dave.rogers@ntu.ac.uk.
Or Therese Easom, Press and Media Relations Manager, on Tel: 0115 848 8774, or via email: therese.easom@ntu.ac.uk.
