 The twin towers of the 1923 Wembley Stadium during construction. Image from The Engineer. The old Wembley Stadium, opened in 1923 as the Empire Stadium, became an iconic part of 20th Century British life thanks to the series of events it hosted. From the 1923 White Horse Cup final, through to the 1966 World Cup and onto events like the 1984 Live Aid concert, (as well as John Betjeman taking to the hallowed turf during his ‘Metro-Land’ documentary), the building became part of the backdrop of British life. The stadium had been built for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, an event that did much to bring people out to what was still part of Middlesex and help kick start the Metro-Land speculative building boom. Like the rest of the exhibition buildings, the intention was to demolish the stadium at the end of the event. In the end a property speculator named James White bought the exhibition site, looking to sell the various buildings for reuse, with the stadium being bought by Arthur Elvin, who had undertaken the selling of the other buildings for White. Elvin formed the Wembley Stadium and Greyhound Racecourse Company and turned the stadium into a venue for hire.  An illustration of the Palace of Industry, designed by Maxwell Ayrton and Owen Williams. The stadium was built ahead of the Empire Exhibition, which opened in April 1924, being completed four days before the famous FA Cup final of 1923, at which a crowd of over 250,000 ended up spilling onto the pitch and being shepherded off by PC George Scorey and his horse Billie. The design and construction of the stadium mirrored that of the other Empire Exhibition buildings, a Beaux Arts facade hiding radical concrete construction. The stadium's exterior was defined by its iconic, domed Twin Towers, which evoked Roman triumphal arches or Mughal pavilions. Ayrton employed a strict classical symmetry across a sweeping, uniform facade that hid the utilitarian sports arena behind. He also used traditional motifs by ensuring the concrete surfaces were meticulously scored and treated to mimic the texture of expensive, traditional dressed stone.To the spectator approaching from Wembley Way, the stadium felt like an embodiment of Empire, solid, durable and strong.   A cross section of the stand and twin towers, and a plan of the stadium. Image from The Engineer. Engineering for this feat of concrete construction was provided by Owen Williams. Faced with a tight 300-day construction deadline and a strict budget of £750,000, Williams knew that traditional brick and stone could not be used. He turned Wembley into one of the largest poured-in-place reinforced concrete projects the world had ever seen, a "Concrete City”. Utilizing concrete's immense tensile strength to construct massive, unadorned structural rakers to hold up the grandstands, Williams also developed a pioneering cantilevered roof that provided unobstructed views for thousands of spectators, taking influence in his designs from stadiums in the United States such as Stamford Stadium in Seattle and Ohio Stadium.  A panorama of the empire exhibition site, with the stadium at the rear. Image from Wembly Matters. The structure of the walls for the stadium were formed of concrete parabolic arches, inter set with monolithic staircase towers in a repeating pattern. For the shells of the twin towers, Williams used 3-inch thick concrete reinforced by curved ribs, sitting on top of the towers which themselves were built in 4-inch concrete. Williams had previously explored ship building using concrete, and applied his findings to these grand structures. Ayrton had also designed the entrance facade with large classical columns, which Williams incorporated in the building as hollow, non-structural elements.  The view of the pitch and track from the restaurant. Image from RIBApix. The finished stadium had a capacity of 120,000, arranged in a bowl shape around the sports area. This shape, not used in smaller football grounds with the stands arranged around the rectangular pitch, allowed a running track and other facilities around the pitch. The elegant finish given the concrete on the exterior was not repeated inside, with the material left unvarnished, less from the “truth to material” ethos of the post war brutalists, and more from expediency. Ayrton and Williams were both knighted for their efforts on the stadium and the other exhibition buildings. Both men continued practicing until the 1960s, both keeping to their preferred styles, Ayrton in the Classical mode, whereas Williams stripped away ornament to bare function, like his Wembley Arena of 10 years later. The buildings of the Empire Exhibition were gradually cleared away, with the stadium demolished in 2003 to make way for the current stadium’s sweeping steel arch. The loss of the Twin Towers was deeply mourned, more so than the windy, open terraces that Williams produced, but both had found a home in the stadium built to last a year, but that became a part of British life.
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 Arnos Grove station ticket hall. Image from RIBApix. Charles Holden’s designs for the underground from the mid 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, represents a high point of transport architecture and modernist design in Britain. His collaboration with Frank Pick brought about a marriage of form and function, civic service and commerce. Indeed the collaboration was not just between Holden and Pick, but also between a host of architects, designers, builders, tradesmen and bureaucrats. This army of people, working under Holden and Pick, created what Pick would termed “medieval modernism”, comparing the extension of the underground network to the creation of a great cathedral, many hands and years in the making. Holden and Pick were not the first pairing of architect and management to adopt a uniform design for the underground network. What we now see as a unified network was originally a collection of competing companies, with different designers. From 1900, financier Charles Yerkes and architect Leslie Green had introduced a standard station design featuring distinctive red exterior tiling, steel frame construction and patterned tiles at platform level. The early deaths of both Yerkes and Green led to financial problems and a loss of design focus. This was not remedied until the meeting of Pick and Holden in 1915 at a conference for the Design and Industries Association, and their subsequent collaboration.  Charles Holden. Image from RIBApix. Holden had begun working as an assistant to a surveyor when still a teenager, eventually becoming an apprentice to a Manchester architect. He later moved to London to work for architect C.R. Ashbee, before moving on to work with H. Percy Adams. The practice specialised in hospitals, with Holden designing a number of them, such as the former children's hospital in Belgravia. After World War I, Holden worked for the Imperial War Graves Commission, designing cemeteries and memorials for those who died in the war.  Franck Pick. Image from RIBApix. Pick studied law at the University of London, before going to work for North Eastern Railways. There he became assistant to managing director George Gibb, and when Gibb moved to work for the Underground Electric Railways of London in 1906, Pick followed. Starting as assistant to Gibb, by 1908 Pick had become Publicity Officer, and four years later Pick was the U.E.R.L’s Commercial Manager. It was in this role that Pick started to have a real impact on the identity of the Underground network. Pick wanted to revolutionize design on the underground network, bringing in a new eye catching, modernist influenced look, that would take in everything from station design to advertising posters to platform lighting. Pick commissioned Edward Johnston to create his now iconic typeface for use on all underground materials and Harry Beck to create his tube map, and he saw Holden as the man to modernise the design of the stations. The UERL already had a chief architect, Stanley Heaps, but Pick felt his designs were not modern enough.  Trinity Road station, now named Tooting Bec. Image from RIBApix. Heaps had been assistant to Leslie Green, and took over his role after Green died of a heart attack in 1908. The first stations Heaps designed by himself used Green’s distinctive oxblood tiling and semi circular windows. His next major set of stations were for the expansion of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (now part of the Northern Line). Heaps designed five stations, between Brent Cross, and Edgware that, unlike his previous work, would be situated in the leafy North London suburbs. To fit in with these surroundings Heaps designed the stations in a more suburban style, with tiled roofs and brick colonnades. Pick wasn’t a fan of this style, and brought in Holden to design the other end of the Northern Line, as the tube extended to Modern. Holden’s stations for the Northern Line from 1924-6 introduced a new style for the underground, with double height ticket halls, simply clad in Portland stone. Holden’s next two projects for the U.E.R.L. would become two of his most famous and would set the scene for the next few years of innovation. First of all came the rebuilding of Piccadilly Circus station, a difficult project that was redesigned with aplomb by Holden. An subterranean elliptical ticket hall was added, clad in marble and adorned with a mural by Stephen Bone. The new building was a great success, and would influence the building of the Moscow Metro in turn. The second building was a new headquarters for the U.E.R.L. at 55 Broadway, replacing the hodge podge of offices the company used in the same area. The gleaming white Portland stone of the finished building brought to mind a cathedral, and proclaimed the might of the growing centralised transport network.  Sudbury Town station. Image from RIBApix. In June and July 1930, Holden and Pick took a tour of Europe to explore the new modernist architecture of the continent. They travelled through Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, visiting buildings by the likes of Willem Dudok, with whom Pick was particularly taken. Pick and Holden were also impressed by the illumination of buildings at night, something they replicated on many underground stations. They didn’t visit the buildings of Le Corbusier, nor those that came out of the Bauhaus, Holden and Pick were both of a mind that exposed concrete was not the proper material for Britain, both practically or emotionally. They were determined to use what they saw as more suitable materials, primarily brick but also wood and metal, in a bid to make the new station architecture forward looking yet humane. The first fruits of the European trip were the new stations designed for the Piccadilly Line at the start of the 1930s. The changes were significant, as can be seen at Sudbury Town from 1931. The Portland stone finish was replaced by locally produced brick, the three screen facade jettisoned for a rectangular box and as much light as possible was provided for the interior. This design would provide the blueprint for the rest of the decade. The extension of the Piccadilly Line into the growing suburbs around London provided space for Holden and Pick to bring to fruition their ideal of an integrated transport network that balanced beauty and utility. The apex of the working relationship between Holden and Pick were the new stations between Manor House and Cockfosters, lauded in the architectural press and in the network's own publicity posters. The commission was given to Holden in April 1931, with the first set of stations opening in September 1932. At the same time as this, a number of stations at the western end of the Piccadilly Line were also being built. This was a heavy workload for a relatively small firm like Adams, Holden & Pearson, and so the ‘one man, one station’ design policy was developed. This gave Holden overall responsibility for the design of the stations, often producing an initial sketch, which was then worked up into a detailed plan by his assistant or the office of Stanley Heaps. Once it was given the green light by a committee headed by Pick, the design was taken up by an assistant who would see it through to completion.  The interior of Cockfosters station. Image from RIBApix. This method worked well through the early 1930s, but the Golden Age didn't last forever. As the New Works Programme was launched in 1935 to replace older stations with the new modern London Transport style, Holden’s attention and energies were being drawn to the rebuilding of the University of London in Bloomsbury, a project that would be only partially completed. The slack was taken up by the office of Stanley Heaps and a few different outside architects, like R.H. Uren and Leonard Bucknell. The designs produced by this group fell below the high standards that had previously been set. Pick asked Holden to return and oversee some of the new designs, but the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Perhaps the biggest compliment that can be paid to the stations of Holden and Pick is the fact that they are still in use, helping millions of Londoners travel around the capital nearly 100 years after they were built. The little boxes designed by Holden to facilitate the journeys of passengers have become instantly recognizable icons of London and its suburbs. The article was originally published as the introduction to London Tube Stations 1924-61, available here
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