I'm guessing that the new walls are fashionable bare concrete, which can absorb grease, rather than the ceramic tiles used on older stations, which were chosen partly because they are easy to keep clean.
The passenger tunnels and platforms have complicated curved shapes finished with
cladding panels made of glass fibre reinforced concrete.
Bryden Wood is designing the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) cladding system for Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool Street and Whitechapel stations, made up of 22000 single and double curved GFRC panels for the platforms and concourses.
These are supported on lightweight modular structural frames fixed within the tunnel lining. The Crossrail specification specifies that all panels are within 3-4mm of each other and with 250m tunnel lengths this requires that each element of the system, and its installation, is executed precisely. It has also required innovation at junctions where large scale double curved panels meet creating a GFRC 'tusk' to span the largest arches and provide precise fixing points.
Bryden Wood work closely with Crossrail and the station design teams and have a team of 12 structural engineers and industrial designers that are producing designing each area of the station at full scale using Solidworks.
The fully codified models are the key deliverable, and form a key part of the checking and coordination procedures by the station architects, reducing the number of system wide typical drawings required. The models are used directly by the fabricators to create the moulds for the panels and the steelwork elements. The system is also designed for speed of installation and weight reduction, putting the health and safety of everyone in the supply chain, the installers and the future maintenance teams at the forefront of the design process.
I can't remember what surface texture they have, and can't find a description, which suggests it wasn't seen as very important. But Bryden Wood have probably put out some rather smug publicity about that too.
