The final tour in the series covered two of the least publicised stations south of the River Thames, Bermondsey and Southwark, neither of which are yet open to the public.
Earlier tours in July featured the section of the line from Stratford to North Greenwich, and the stations at Canary Wharf and Canada Water, which are expected to open early next month.
After a talk by Roland Paoletti, the JLE's chief architect, readers were shown around Bermondsey Station by project architect Gordon Talbot of Ian Ritchie Architects. The most striking features of this station, built by an Aoki/Soletanche joint venture, are a curved stainless steel and glass roof that allows daylight to flood down on to the platform concourse and massive, V-shaped concrete trusses that prop up the perimeter diaphragm walls.
Architect Richard MacCormac of MacCormac Jamieson Prichard later took the group around Southwark Station, which is also being built by Aoki/Soletanche. This station features a drum-shaped ticket hall that pays homage to the classic 1920s tube stations designed by Charles Holden, and a dazzling subterranean hall.
The hall, which is semi-conical in shape and four storeys high, includes a vast, curving glass wall comprising 600 blue-glass triangles, held in place by a steel lattice structure. Specially designed cast steel "spiders", with six projecting arms, hold the corners of three panels.
The wall was created by the architect in conjunction with artist Alexander Beleschenko. Structural engineer YRM Anthony Hunt Associates devised the technology.
