London Victoria Station Terminal, Main Concourse (Sussex) WCs Interior Design Refurbishment.

Nov 2018 – Jun 2019

Wendy Hardie in design collaboration with Landolt + Brown ArchitectsLondon Victoria Station WCs

 

 

 

 

Wendy Hardie design collaboration with Landolt + Brown Architects, London Victoria Station WCs

 

 

 

 

Wendy Hardie in design collaboration with Landolt + Brown ArchitectsLondon Victoria Station WCs

 

 

Wendy Hardie design collaboration with Landolt + Brown Architects, London Victoria Station WCs

 

 

 

 

Wendy Hardie in design collaboration with Landolt + Brown Architects, London Victoria Station WCs Interior Design Refurbishment

 

 

Interior design collaboration with Landolt + Brown Architects.  Co lead design with Architect Adam Brown.

 

This project involved the entire refurbishment and spatial rearrangement of the existing basement Gents and Ladies WC’s at one of the UK’s busiest train terminals, including very generous baby changing cubicles in both, and the introduction of Gender Neutral WCs and full disabled access at concourse level.  Landolt + Brown’s studio was approached by NR on the back of the success of the new Hackney Wick Station which opened in summer 2018.  Our brief from the client, NR’s customer relations team, was to radically transform the quality and customer experience of their main concourse WC’s at Victoria, with a view to establishing exceptional free facilities within a station environment that put passengers and public first.  The caveat was, that due to funding deadlines, the project had to be completed from scratch in 7 months, twice as fast as it should have taken.  This was challenging, in particular for lead in times for product development, testing and product availablity, given that we had to first create a working brief, work within the station’s very tight existing spatial and safety parameters, and with a complex client organisation that has very layered, fixed decision making procedures.

The long term aim of the client was to take this project as the benchmark, with L+B studio going on to create an ambitious design guide for NR’s other lead termini facilities, to then roll out similar standards of design, material and environmental quality for their other main rail termini WC facilities in London, then out to the UK’s largest cities stations.

The project involved the creation of bespoke terrazzo wash hand troughs, corner coving and flooring, bespoke etched, painted glass partitions and copper and bronze effect steel doors, pilasters and casements. High level back lit glass light boxes run along the entire width of the rear walls of all WC cubicles to create the feeling of being day lit from outside, as if the spaces were above ground. Two tiled greenhouse courtyards with living, large tropical plants, with their own state of the art lighting to keep them healthy, have been pioneered here, there is no daylight.

We wanted to create dignity, solidity, durability, lightness, cleanliness, freshness, spaciousness, calmness, personal intimacy and safety. We wanted to take a strongly sculptural approach that has some connections to the best of Victorian, Modernist and Mid Century WC design with references to the specific Station’s design and materiality. 

 

Award : Loo of the Year 2019

 

The Design Guide has now been created by L+B studio and design work has commenced on London Bridge Station’s new WC facilities. 

A more modest but sibling design refurbishment has been given to Victoria Station’s Kent Concourse WCs due to their substantially smaller existing location on the Kent platform.