From the very beginning it was envisaged that the top of this station was to be an extraordinary world, an unexpected landscape that you would see from a distance, and when illuminated at night, would provide a glowing beacon among the high-rise buildings of this commercial district. This is not just another typical public garden in London, but a celebration and tribute to the North Dock’s maritime past and the arrival of Crossrail.
The opportunity to create such a large garden in what will become a new destination for London was both a privilege and a challenge. The design of the garden responds to the architectural language of the roof in the creation of a unique and sheltered planting environment. It will offer visitors a totally new vantage point from which to look out across the water and the surrounding area.
Stephen Richards, Partner, Gillespies
Gillespies commissioned landscape architects Growth Industry, as specialist planting consultants, to develop a planting design concept for the roof garden:
The stretch of Docks from St. Katherine’s in the west to the Royal Docks in the east grew and developed over a 200 year period. The opening of the West India Docks in 1802, considered to be the greatest civil engineering structure of the day, represented the beginning of a period of unprecedented growth and expansion. As the British Empire grew rapidly through the 19th century so too did industries based on the import of exotic products from across the globe. The late 18th and 19th century saw increasing exploration of unknown areas. Scientific establishments such as Kew Gardens and the RHS sponsored certain expeditions by plant hunters, whilst others, overtly commercial, sought to exploit the natural bounty of these far-flung regions with an emphasis on valuable cash-crops. The docks and their unloading ships were the focus for exotic cargos arriving into the UK.
The soft landscape design concept seeks to draw on the exoticism of these cargos and the regions they represented, expressing it through the use of wide-ranging foreign species. Sitting within West India Dock the Crossrail Station Roof Garden can be seen as a metaphorical ship laden with unusual specimens from across the globe, with the ETFE roof structure reminiscent of both the protective Wardian plant cases used in transportation and the great Victorian glasshouses that received these incoming novelties.
The geographic location of the site, directly north of Greenwich, places the docks virtually on the Prime Meridian dividing the eastern and western hemispheres. This position at the point where east meets west has inspired a broad division of the park into two geographic zones. The eastern end of the site represents the eastern hemisphere and is primarily planted with species from the east, whilst the western end of the site represents the western hemisphere and is primarily contains plant species from the west.
The garden is partially enclosed by a distinctive roof which wraps around the building like a protective shell. Designed by Foster + Partners, this 300-metre long timber lattice ETFE roof is open in the centre to draw in natural light and rain for natural irrigation as well as providing visual connection with the neighbourhood of Poplar to the North. The ETFE air cushions, which are a highly insulating material, create a comfortable environment for people to enjoy the gardens all year round, as well as providing a favourable microclimate allowing the use of less hardy and more unusual plant species.