Canary Wharf is born in the Isle of Dogs, the area once marshy delimited by an indentation of the Thames, where the commodities came coming from the english colonies. Today this zone is to the center of a program of improvement of the Dockses, with the construction of offices and ultramodern residences in spaces first occupied by stores and industries. Among the basins of the West India Docks, where to the beginnings of the 19th century they unloaded tomatoes and bananas coming from the Canary Island, the Canary Wharf today it is a laboratory of architectural innovations. So ambitious housing complexes, places and restaurants have risen: a lot of the international celebrities as De Niro and Cher that have acquired house in this zone, dominated from a 800 feet tower in steel and glass, the tallest building in the whole Great Britain and one of the tallest in Europe.

The tube station was intended from the start to be the showpiece of the Jubilee Line Extension, and its design was awarded in 1990 to the renowned architect Sir Norman Foster. It was constructed in a drained arm of the former dock, using a simple "cut and cover" method to excavate an enormous pit 24 metres (78 feet) deep and 265 metres (869 feet) long. The resulting large volume of the interior has led to it being compared to a cathedral, and it has even been used to celebrate a wedding. However, the main reason for the station's enormous proportions is the great number of passengers predicted, as many as 50,000 daily.

Above ground, there is little sign of the vast interior: two curved glass canopies at the east and west ends of the station cover the entrances and refract daylight into the ticket hall below. A public park is located between the two canopies, above the station concourse. It had originally been intended that the infilled section of the dock would be reinstated above the station. However, this proved impractical because of technical difficulties and the park was created instead.

Canary Wharf station and the Jubilee Line Extension itself were partly funded by the owners of the Canary Wharf complex, with the intention of making it more accessible to commuters. Only five years after the construction of the extension, capacity issues are already becoming apparent. It is envisaged that they will be resolved by adopting a new signalling systen to allow trains to run more closely together, and thus more frequently.