Spectacular new Roof Garden adds to the attraction of Canary Wharf

by Benson Agoha | Tourism

It's your typical end of the day from work and you are on your way home, sitting inside a DLR Train hurtling along the tracks between East India and Poplar, you notice the Billings Gate Market. Biggest fish market in the City.

Space walk on Roof Garden. (Credit: Peter Grew).

The train trundles on, but sitting next to you is a group of tourists just arriving the city and they ask you `what's that?' You look out the window. Across the near distant view is a sprawling horizontal network of steeled roof, portions of which are seemingly open.

That's the Canary Wharf Cross Rail Station, on top of which is a spectacular Roof Garden that's just been opened to the public. 

The horizontal length of this roof is 256m, from stem to stern. It is just a little shorter than the vertical length of London's tallest building, the `Shard', at London Bridge which is 306m.

The Roof Garden is stuffed with endless possibilities, many of which, you won't even imagine unless you have been there. But Canary Wharf has been, I am told one of tourists favourite locations in the city. On a closer examination, I find it was not always like that. Certainly not before 1987 when construction began.

Part of the Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf is home to the best of modern architecture, planned designed and constructed to appeal. All round.

Did you know that a part of it has huge neon lights that keep you up to date with the latest happenings on the news - right from the moment you emerge from the tube?  The headlines are flashing past on a huge lintel-level neon board.

Photograher Peter Grew, who visited the roof garden recently found it breathtaking.  He said "I discovered this cool futuristic garden when I went for a stroll early one morning. It was hovering over the streets..#CanaryWharf #London."

Woolwich, a crossrail route is home to one the beautiful stations the Crossrail project will unveil when it opens in 2018. It will take only 7 minutes from Canary Wharf to Woolwich and 11 minutes from there to Abbey Wood.

According to Crossrail, other facts and figures of the station structure that hosts the roof garden include:

256m – length of the station box, almost three football pitches.

45m – approximate width of the station worksite.

27-30m – the width of the station.

25m – depth below water level of station base slab.

10m – depth below the level of the surrounding dock water.

33m – depth of concrete reinforced steel tube piles.

296 steel piles measuring 18.5m high and 1.2m wide, holding the water back

100 million litres – approximate amount of water removed from the dock, the equivalent of 40 Olympic swimming pools.

Approximately 150,000m3 of excavated material has been removed from the dock to construct the station.

16,500 tonnes of reinforced steel will be used.

156,000m3 of concrete will be used, equivalent to 200 Olympic swimming pools

6 lifts and 19 escalators, with the longest escalator being 29 metres long with a rise of 16.8 metres.

25 million passengers are expected to use Canary Wharf Crossrail station every year

The exit escalator is superb.

Structure: viewed from a DLR train across the plain.

Existing and new structure planned for Canary Wharf.
(Credit: The Telegraph)

Activity on the roof garden.

View of the area before construction started in 1987.

The Walk space on the Roof Garden.

Skyline of Canary Wharf view from behind the Gherkin.

The Man behind the development of Canary Wharf: Sir George Iacobescu.
(Credit: via The Telegraph).

Spectacular design and construction with a rare view.