"The fabric is a progression of the original design on the Liverpool Street to Shenfield line, inspired by travelling the route and abstracting the surroundings into rectangles and linear motifs. The Elizabeth Line then adds more pinstripe details, as a nod to the suits in the City of London and creating a sense of speed as the line travels from east to west. The colour palette started with the specific shade of purple that is the line colour, then adding in tones of purple, mixed with warmer and lighter shades to keep the fabric bright in overall effect, complementing the dark interior. The palette also incorporates flashes of other line colours that the route interacts with as accents."
Installation
Elizabeth Line
The Elizabeth Line, named in honour of the Queen and built by Crossrail Ltd, is the new high speed railway which is set to transform travel across London. Running for more than 60 miles, from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through 26 miles of new tunnels beneath the capital, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, the new Elizabeth Line promises to cut most journey times by at least half and bring an extra 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of central London.
The £14.8 billion project, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Europe, sees the addition of 10 new stations to the network and major upgrades to another 30 in order to cope with the extra passenger demand.
Regal purple
The new line, operated by Transport for London, is being opened in phases and will be fully operational in 2022. It will feature 70 new 200 metre long trains, built in the UK by Bombardier in Derby, each able to carry up to 1,500 people in modern, air-conditioned interconnected walk-through carriages, with CCTV, real-time travel information, Wi-Fi and 4G. In keeping with the royal name of the line, regal purple is the dominant colour on the Elizabeth Line branding which is carried right through to the new fabric design which came from British design studio Wallace Sewell. The fabric is woven by Camira on wire looms to create a moquette with both cut and loop textured pile.
Flashes of colour
