I have been trying to figure out what has happened at Liverpool Street.  It appears that Network Rail have dumped their partnership with Sellar as developers and Herzog & de Meuron as architects in favour of working directly with a big local architectural practice, ACME, based very near Liverpool Street in Tabernacle Street (this surely is an advantage).

So, who are ACME ? They were set up in 2007 by Friedrich Ludewig who came to London from Berlin to study at the Architectural Association with Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo and then worked with them on the John Lewis building in Leicester.

His practice has done a strange miscellany of projects internationally, including big masterplanning in Earls Court, but that is perhaps to be expected for a younger practice seeking work internationally.  Their projects include an interesting housing project on the edge of the City and the pavilion which opened recently as the gateway to the Olympic Park.  They have also done an organic food market in Wiesbaden.

What they are proposing looks definitely better than the crackpot Herzog and de Meuron scheme:-

1. They are protecting the integrity of the Victorian Great Eastern Hotel instead of building on top of it.
2. They are obviously celebrating the original ironwork of the train sheds which are indeed wonderful.
3. They have somehow inserted two tower blocks which are apparently necessary to pay for the development.

I could live without the cauliflower on top of the tower blocks and the tower blocks themselves look bland; and I suspect there is considerable loss to the unlisted 1980s additions; but overall it looks as if they are at least trying to do something interesting and adventurous having been given a very tricky brief.

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/controversial-liverpool-street-station-redevelopment-dropped-in-favour-of-new-design-76808/