West Ham sandwich.

This station, unlike its fellows on the Jubilee Line Extension, uses the strategy of linking platforms by a bridge, rather than tunnels. And because of its exposed position, it adopts a different aesthetic, derived from the decent, urbane London Underground architecture of the interwar years.

West Ham lies between Stratford (p56) and Canning Town (p65) stations and, like them, it is a very complicated above ground junction of different rail lines. Here, a London Underground (metro) line and a branch of British Rail (national network) cross the north-south tracks of the North London Line (another part of British Rail). The new Jubilee Line Extension runs parallel to that route at ground level. The new station largely replaces and updates an existing one which served all the older lines. A bridge connects the new ticket hall with the island platform for the North London Line and the entirely new one for the Jubilee Line to the west.

Unlike the other stations so far completed, West Ham is consciously influenced by the interwar work of Charles Holden, who built urbane Dudokian stations as neighbourhood nuclei when the metro system exploded, vastly increasing the effective size of the city. In some of his best stations, Holden created lofty halls of brick and concrete lit from tall clerestories, and that is exactly what van Heyningen & Hayward have done at West Ham. A rigorous 6m x 6m structural and servicing grid disciplines the whole design. In-situ concrete columns at the nodes of the grid are clad in brick, and formed to be either round in section (when they are freestanding) or square, where they engage with walls as pilasters or grow out of them. The columns support precast roof members which trace the grid in the ceiling, itself made of wood wool slabs. In the hall, a bank of stairs and escalators majestically leads up to bridge level, and the space is made luminous by glass-block clerestories. Glass blocks form the walls of the bridge, and those of the upper level concourse over the Jubilee Line platform.

The main entrance is from the south, where a formal paved forecourt will be partly turned into a welcoming arcade by the bridge overhead. Passengers will either go northwards through both the new hall and the old one to the stairs leading to the overhead lines, or if they want to get to the north-south platforms, they reach the old hall and then have to turn round to go up the stairs to the bridge. The apparently clumsy route was necessitated by the very tight and complicated site.

So far, the project looks promising. But much will depend on final execution. The architects say that because the consultants were not allowed to supervise work on site, 'it was part of our approach that the aesthetic should be tough enough to survive the rigours of a protracted construction period, variable quality control and changing legal and technical requirements'. We shall shortly see if their strategy has worked.

Architect van Heyningen and Haward Architects

Design team Birkin Haward, Joanna van Heyningen, Robin Mallalieu, Lucy Marston, Bert Rozeman, Peter Williams

Technical contractor and structural engineer Kenchington Ford

Electrical and mechanical engineer Jubilee Line

Model photographs Putler/Armiger