Canary Wharf Group plc has completed the striking timber lattice roof above the Canary Wharf Crossrail station. The final aluminium piece was placed on the Foster + Partners designed roof, marking the structural completion of the project which began in May 2009. The roof will sit above a new roof garden and Canary Wharf Group’s four storey, 115, 000 sq ft retail and leisure development including shops, restaurants, bars and a cinema. The roof garden and first phase of the retail and leisure space will open in May 2015, three years before trains run through the station. . The station box was then built ‘top down, ’ 28 metres below the water surface to create the ticket hall and platform levels. Canary Wharf is the most progressed of Crossrail’s 10 new stations. Calling to mind Rem Koolhaas's tubular design for an elevated train stop at the IIT campus in Chicago, Norman Foster's massive Crossrail Station at Canary Wharf has just opened, marking the beginning phase of the roll out of a massive London infrastructure project. More than just an entrance to the forthcoming rail line—estimated to carry a £14.8 billion (~$22.5 billion) price tag—the enclosed station features shops, restaurants and a year-round garden that can be covered up by an innovative, retractable timber lattice roof interspersed with billowy, air-filled cushions. Fashioned from 1, 418 pieces of sustainably sourced spruce, the curved cover is actually shaped via a series of more than 500 steel nodes—the whole structure only required four bent beams. Meant to provide a warm, natural contrast to the steel office towers along the wharf, the Foster + Partner's project adds a new public space to a growing, and changing, commercial area. Traditionally home to numerous banks and skyscrapers,
