The Arbour is a 13m high glulam timber canopy at Brent Cross West station - providing a welcoming vista of Station Square and welcome to Brent Cross Town and its collection of buildings.

shedkm and Studio Egret West have co-authored the innovative design behind the entrance to the brand new station at Brent Cross West, which opened in December 2023 with The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

The design creates a befitting arrival point to a new destination at Brent Cross Town and, picking up the masterplan’s wider themes of wellbeing and access to nature, combines both the station functionality with a planted public space.

The station’s impressive, highly sustainable eastern entrance, The Arbour, which provides a gateway into Brent Cross Town, was co-authored by Studio Egret West and shedkm, with Studio Egret West retained to evolve the design through detail and construction stages. It includes a lofty timber canopy that covers a multi-level arrival sequence, picking up Brent Cross Town’s focus on wellbeing and access to nature by combining functionality with a planted public space. The large-scale glulam timber frame was developed to sit comfortably between, and connect to, two future office buildings.

The Arbour is also home to a giant piece of public art, ‘Time passes & still I think of you’, by celebrated Barnet-raised artist Giles Round, which covers 250m2 of the station’s main concourse with brightly coloured vitreous enamel panels.

Brent Cross West is the first new mainline station to be built in London in over a decade. The impressive Thameslink station is the gateway to new neighbourhood Brent Cross Town, where shedkm have also designed offices for Related Argent and Barnet Council.

Brent Cross Town will deliver 6,700 new homes, 3 million ft2 of offices creating space for 25,000 employees, and a new high street.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “Brent Cross West station, the first major new mainline station in London in over a decade, will be transformative for northwest London, better connecting Brent Cross with the rest of the capital and unlocking wider development in the area. The station will serve as a gateway to a Brent Cross Town, a brand-new neighbourhood delivering new homes, creating jobs, and aiming to be net zero by 2030."