Canadian Urbanism Uncovered
Read more articles by Matthew Blackett
If you find yourself in London, England anytime soon, you may want to check out the work of the Village Underground in the Shoreditch neighbourhood. They have taken discarded London subway cars, placed them on top of a renovated Victorian warehouse building and converted the trains into creative workspaces. All the cars have carbon-neutral heat and power and are ecologically outfitted.
[ via Treehugger ] images courtesy of Village Underground
bottom photo by Matt Cowley
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8 comments
We have a bunch of subway cars up for retirement in the next couple years… this is an idea worth copying – it’d be an awesome Waterfront Office Park!
I was in London last year and took a photo from streetlevel of the two red and white cars that are raised up near the edge of the building. I couldn’t see much more than their noses peering over the ledge and I always wondered what they were doing up there! I’d attach the photo to these comments if I could.
Neat posting. You see, you learn so much from Spacing…
If you’ve got them up on Flickr, Matt, we could post them.
I was thinking that the scrapped H-series cars could be used to form a reef or breakwater to slow erosion on the Scarborough Bluffs. New York subway cars are being sunk in the Atlantic to form reefs which encourage marine growth.
Given the TTC’s precarious finances I guess the value of the scrapped metal will be too much to pass up.
So strange to hear Tube trains referred to as “subway” trains! (A subway is something quite different in London…)
With London housing prices being what they are, I’m surprised that people are not living in these subway cars. The cost of housing in Whistler, British Columbia, the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics, is so high that they have converted ship/truck containers into apartments for service workers at the ski resort.
[…] find it, but I did find the story that I bet the CBC’s reporter originally picked up. From Spacing Toronto which is where the pic comes from. Old tube trains in […]
The second one (the one you took from Treehugger) is awesome! A very stylish office space 🙂