Paolozzi's Tottenham Court Road mosaics to be given a new life in Edinburgh

Gone are the days when weary Northern or Central  Line passengers would be greeted with these beautiful mosaics as they rode the escalators at Tottenham Court Road tube station. But soon you should be able to see Eduardo Paolozzi's work in  his home city, Edinburgh.

Good news in the Architect's Journal this week for all of us who miss the Eduardo Paolozzi mosaics that covered the walls, tunnels and escalator shafts of Tottenham Court Road tube station in London .

These artworks, which date back to a refurbishment of the station in the early 1970s,  have all now been stripped out of the station as part of the Crossrail refurbishment and expansion scheme, not without much debate. Now it seems at least part of this much-loved work is to have a new home - in Edinburgh, where Paolozzi was born, and where he went to art school in the 1940s.

The AJ story is a fascinating read: apparently the remains of the mosaics are now being stored at the London Transport Museum, which has its own depot in Acton. It seems that some of them - the mosaics around the arches at the top of the main escalators - will be restored and re-used in a new construction project at Edinburgh University's Art Collection.

It was always a lovely surprise to me to see these glimmering mosaics as you ascended out of the gloomy depths of the Northern Line. Those grand classical arches around the escalator well, encrusted with Paolozzi's coloured tiles, looked like they belonged in some grand byzantine Church, or even San Marco in Venice.

Apparently we might have to wait a few years before the restored mosaics are on view again - but it will be worth the wait.

Here are a few of the mosaics that you might be able to see again - but there's a wonderful photo archive of the mosaics in place on the previously mentioned London Transport Museum website.