As commuters return to trains, stations and offices, and as the Design Council and Network Rail launch a national conversation about the future of local station design, we explore the wonders of prefab design on the railways

O n my travels I encountered the good, bad and ugly of railway architecture (writes photographer Luke O’Donovan), but what I was pleasantly surprised to see almost everywhere I visited was the civic pride that both railway staff and the public have for the railways.

My photographs started as an architectural project, but the more stations I visited, the more I began to appreciate how much of the magic of a great station comes from everything else: people, community and place. To twist the words of the late great Jane Jacobs, stations have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody

The Mod-X buildings, devised by British Rail’s London Midland Region architecture team, advanced the innovation of a modular system, by which many configurations of station were possible.

Barcelona Pavilion for the International exhibition 1929 built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion of 1929 continued to be an influence: for Mod-X the structural columns were of cruciform pattern similar to those used in Barcelona. The railway architects chose this pattern because it would allow walls and partitions to be connected to all or any of the four sides of each column according to the layout of spaces.

Top row: Heald Green. Middle row, l-r: Burnage, East Didsbury. Bottom row, l-r: Heald Green, East Didsbury.

Electrification of the West Coast Main Line between London and Liverpool, and of suburban routes around Manchester in Lancashire and Cheshire, required a considerable number of stations to be replaced or renewed quickly. This was an opportunity for innovation in prefabricated railway buildings planned on a grid of rectangular units.

A programme to replace 400 decayed, dirty or outdated station buildings in ten years from about 1965, without sufficient money to design new stations at every location, led to the British Rail’s southern region’s architects selecting an existing building system called Clasp (Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme). Clasp used prefabricated concrete panels of standardised dimensions for exterior walls, and timber/glass panels for interior partitions, to make simple, mostly single-storey structures of rectangular plan.

Clockwise from top left: Charlton, Catford, Forest Hill, Brockley

Walls could be configured according to the operating needs of a station. A range of wall panels included blank concrete types, some with high clerestory windows for lavatories or private offices, others with half-height windows below the clerestories for ticket halls and waiting areas, or the concrete could be omitted entirely in favour of fully glazed fixed windows, or functioning doors. The Southern Region built more than thirty Clasp stations; the system found limited use on other parts of the railway network.

Advocacy of steel in construction and of glass manufactured to both insulate and control heat gain encouraged architects to adopt the aesthetic of apparently self-supporting glass box buildings, as the ultimate expression of an idealised urban future. This dream was not at all new – it had been around in designers’ drawings since the early 20th century, waiting for material technology and structural engineering to make it a reality.

British Rail’s Southern Region was dissatisfied with the results of its Clasp project. Noticing a station made by the Eastern Region at Bishop’s Stortford (Hertfordshire), in the style of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s mid-western American office buildings, Southern Region architects produced the D70 – Design for the seventies.

Clockwise from top left: Liss, Maze Hill, Streatham, Stoke Newington, Wood Street, Elmers End

In the D70 and its several variants developed by British Rail across Southern and Eastern operating regions, structures giving internal support to the single-storey glazed station buildings took two forms. One featured horizontal beams spanning the space in one direction between perimeter columns; the second comprised a three-dimensional ‘space frame’ of interconnecting struts.

Where there are insufficient resources to procure fully architect-designed stations, producers of modular structures Macemain +Amstad offer a range of prefabricated examples. There are small shelters giving cover for a ticket machine, and complete buildings which contain ticket office and waiting area, all made with stainless steel and toughened glass. Almost all the construction and interior finishes are handled at the production facility, so that the buildings can be delivered for quick completion by little more than bolting the modules together.

Clockwise from top left: Shotton, Templecombe, Cwmbran, Lichfield Trent Valley

Macemain + Amstad station buildings are designed to be commissioned quickly and simply. They can be assembled for use in four hours.

Station buildings are commonly characterised by a rectangular block form below a flat roof. This is a result of systematised assembly systems and a desire to promote the aesthetic of modernity. Network Rail’s Modular Station made possible standardised buildings for new sites and where better facilities were needed to reflect increases in passenger volumes and expectations. The Modular Station concept scheme was published in 2006, as part of a 25-year plan.

Clockwise from top left: Mitcham Eastfields, Greenhithe, Corby, Hassocks

The Modular Station too could be configured in many ways without negatively affecting the structural or visual integrity of the building-canopy combination. Both horizontal and vertical dimensions could be varied without altering the unity of the building design. By keeping the columns at the corners, the enclosed space was free for any internal layout.

Network Rail and Design Council have launched ExploreStation – a national conversation about the future of UK local station design. Learn more about the initiative, and sign up for the next round of public engagement in May.

HUB: Making places for people and trains, photography by Luke O’Donovan; text by David Lawrence is published by Network Rail