The giant tunnels of the Crossrail project in London are already feats of global engineering history and, this weekend, the public will have the rare chance to see the subterranean spectacle before the service becomes operational in 2018.
Seven different sites, including Canary Wharf, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road will be open to 900 members of the public as part of the annual Open House architecture event.
Like many of the perennial favourites, including No 10 Downing Street, tickets for Crossrail have long been booked out but those lucky enough to get access will be in for an adventure as they travel around 40 metres below the capital.
At Tottenham Court Road, visitors will be taken behind the hoardings of the £15bn railways project and descend into the Goslett Yard Box worksite. They will be allowed to walk along the curved platform in Crossrail’s central section stations as far as the Dean Street escalator incline, 24 metres below the streets of Soho, before returning via the eastbound platform.
Now in its 24th year, Open House provides free access to more than 750 buildings in the capital with 140 new entries for 2016.
Classics in this year’s lineup include Crossness, in Abbey Wood, south-east London – an overground sewage pumping station dubbed “cathedral on the marshes” because of its ornate interior. Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s Victorian gem is renowned for its ornate ironwork but it is the four steam-powered beam engines which attracted engineering pilgrims when it first opened in 1865.
Organisers expect 250,000 people to participate in the event and warn of queues at famous buildings including George Gilbert Scott’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Gherkin and the Brutalist Trellick Tower in west London.
Architecture aficionados can get a glimpse of how the masters work in architect Lord Richard Rogers’ studios on the 14th floor of the Cheesegrater, while fellow octogenarian Lord Foster is inviting the public to his workshop in Wandsworth.
With 29 boroughs participating, there will be a wide variety of options available, with many private homeowners willing to give access to architect-design conversions, extensions and new builds.
Among those exciting organisers most this year are architect Jonathan Tuckey’s The Yard House in Lordship Lane in Southwark, with its corrugated roof and glazing; Folds House in Haringey, with its stark zig zag walls; or the more modest Canopy House extension in Stoke Newington with a cantilevered roof.
Four Stirling Prize winners, including an all-girls’ school in Wandsworth, are on show, while new housing schemes including Silchester Estate in Kensington and Chelsea and Darbishire Place in Tower Hamlets show how architects and developers are addressing the housing crisis.
Other buildings taking part include the Argentinian ambassador’s residence in Westminster, the Royal Albert Hall, the Olympic Park, a yurt in a garden in north London and access to Deephams sewage works near Picketts Lock, Edmonton, and a recycling plant in Peckham.
London’s deputy mayor for planning Jules Pipe, who launched the event at Richard Rogers’ offices in the Cheesegrater, said the it chimed with mayor Sadiq Khan’s aims to make London one of the most equitable cities in the world.
The former Hackney mayor cited stories of primary schoolchildren being taken to City Hall and saying things like “I never thought I would be allowed into a building like this.” This type of experience was “transformative”, he said.
