Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms and Vauxhall - redevelopment plans and news

[lang rabbie]

Great, great building though, its a shame it wasn't regenerated for the Millenium instead of the bloody Dome.

A heretic writes...

Is it really a great building? I can't make my mind up

Station A (the 1929 half of the bulding - it only had two chimneys until the 1950s!) has some fine art deco interiors around the control room.

But given the destruction of the rest of the interior, would they be better understood reassembled in the Science Museum rather than in the middle of a shopping mall?

I agree the chimneys are a landmark, and part of the folk memory of anyone brought up in the last sixty years in south London and those parts of the south of England served by trains to Victoria or Waterloo - for whom it meant there was only ten minutes before arrival in the capital.

It shows how architecture can be used to tame a bloody enormous bit of engineering in distant views. The architect Giles Gilbert Scott was only brought in because of protests that the building was too large and would be an eyesore for long distances along the river!

But it certainly isn't on a human scale, and I suspect that seen close up all those millions of bricks will look just as dull as Bankside does.

 

[girasol]

Obviously the power station itself wouldn't make great housing material, but there's a huge area around it which would...

As for the power house, I always think of Pink Floyd's Animals album when I see it!

Couldn't they turn it into a massive, affordable, leisure centre? (or at least some of it?). If they really gave a shit they'd do that, and also add some other community orientated things to it, like a libray, doctor's surgery, dentist, maybe even some sort of adult education college...

Nah, it'd never happen!

 

[Belushi]

They should have used it to house the British Library instead of the red brick monstrosity in St Pancras.

 

[Tricky Skills]

The BBC gained access for those wonderful pictures because of the 'story' that a Jobcentre has just opened up on site. Owners Parkview promise 9,000 local jobs, but I can only find two advertised online.

Local toady MP Martin Linton doesn't inspire confidence either, being a lobbyist for Parkview

I've blooged a little about this with all the links and stuff HERE - scroll down a post or two.

 

[corporate whore]

Is it really a great building? I can't make my mind up

Wouldn't miss it if it went, tbh. Wish it had graced Pink Floyd's 'Relics' album cover, rather than 'Dark Side..' 'cos that's what it is. IMHO, naturally..

 

[Tricky Skills]

Um...

Actually it graced Animals.

 

[corporate whore]

of course...

 

[Skim]

So who is reponsible for all the hi-falutin' bullshit posters outside the power station? The ones telling you about the Ideas Generation (whatever the hell that is) and 'motivational' straplines such as "I think, there I can"?

Makes me retch every time I pass it on the bus. Empty, meaningless crap.

 

[districtline]

i remember having a few friends coming over from abroad, this was when i was living in london, and they wanted me to take them on a tour of the city. i started at battersea power plant. only unofficiall sightseeing tours like mine start there

love that building though and living in that tiny room in fulham was worth it when i could go jogging to the gates of battersea park and look at the power plan in the summer evenings.

 

[Dask]

I've always wanted to know more about the doomed theme park that was going to be built in the late 80's.

Are there any plans online to illustrate what it could of looked like it it had gone ahead?

I've always had images in my mind of a rollercoaster going round the chimneys.

 

[lang rabbie]

I've always wanted to know more about the doomed theme park that was going to be built in the late 80's.

Are there any plans online to illustrate what it could of looked like it it had gone ahead?

I've always had images in my mind of a rollercoaster going round the chimneys.

Haven't seen anything visual - but this gives a flavour...

... a syndicate led by one John Broome was given the go-ahead to turn it into a leisure centre and entertainment park. Among the novel features they proposed were electronic golf, a dance floor and gym. There would be a swimming pool, jogging track, weights room and health spa. There were to be cinemas, shops, restaurants and tea rooms. There would be an oceanarium, carousels and Disney-style rides. An all-in ticket, priced £3.50, would admit you to everything.

Not least among this plan's supporters was the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who praised Broome, a leisure entrepreneur, for what she called his "vision". She particularly warmed to his intended "theming" of Battersea, which was meant to turn the great Deco hall of turbo-alternator No 3 into "The World of Dickens" and give a similar adjacent industrial cavern a new "Tudor look". Between the buildings and the river, where once 85,000 tons of coal had been piled, a "Tivoli-style gardens" would be laid out, while the entrance to the station was to get a "Victorian" glass canopy. .

Source: http://briandeer.com/leisure.htm

 

[oryx]

So who is reponsible for all the hi-falutin' bullshit posters outside the power station? The ones telling you about the Ideas Generation (whatever the hell that is) and 'motivational' straplines such as "I think, there I can"?

Makes me retch every time I pass it on the bus. Empty, meaningless crap.

If you think that's bad, take a look at their website:

http://www.thepowerstation.co.uk/bps_site_001/

The bit about "location" emphasises that it is next to Kensington & Chelsea. No mention of which bit of Battersea it's in, or of it being in Wandsworth Borough. I thought they were both OK areas myself, but they are obviously far too vulgar and too rough to be mentioned, lest the gilded potential occupants of this site be frightened away..............

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Well, some parts of the Wandsworth Road are tastier than others.

 

[Skim]

But it's on Battersea Park Road.

The bit about "location" emphasises that it is next to Kensington & Chelsea. No mention of which bit of Battersea it's in, or of it being in Wandsworth Borough. I thought they were both OK areas myself, but they are obviously far too vulgar and too rough to be mentioned, lest the gilded potential occupants of this site be frightened away..............

There's no escaping the huge estates on the other side of the road from the Power Station... wonder what would happen to them should the site be developed?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Indeed it is. But you'd want to know what the neighbours were like...

 

[Fuzzy]

one reason i can speculate that it has taken so long to reach any sort of agreement on how it will be reused is that in order to reuse the site there will probably be substantial remediation costs involved. for any developer to consider undertaking this along with all the other planning gain costs that wandsworth are going to ask for they ahve ahd to find a scheme that will allow them to buy the site, cover their own build costs and planning gain costs and to still make a profit for themselves. if they didnt they wouldnt be doing it. i dont see a whole long list of public sector bodies lining up to redevelop the site do you?

 

[oryx]

There's no escaping the huge estates on the other side of the road from the Power Station... wonder what would happen to them should the site be developed?

I think you mean the Patmore and/or Savona Estate - AFAIK they are too separate from the site (other side of BP Road) to be affected architecturally (?) but socially, I would guess there will probably be an increase in value of flats bought there under the Right to Buy.

one reason i can speculate that it has taken so long to reach any sort of agreement on how it will be reused is that in order to reuse the site there will probably be substantial remediation costs involved. for any developer to consider undertaking this along with all the other planning gain costs that wandsworth are going to ask for they ahve ahd to find a scheme that will allow them to buy the site, cover their own build costs and planning gain costs and to still make a profit for themselves. if they didnt they wouldnt be doing it. i dont see a whole long list of public sector bodies lining up to redevelop the site do you?

No, I don't, but there are other parts of London which have been regenerated with a far more inclusive vision - either with publicly accessible and educational or entertainment facilities, like the Tate Modern (formerly another power station just in case anyone didn't know!) or with a mixture of these & social housing (the Greenwich site which includes the Dome ) or with mainly social housing (Coin Street in Waterloo). These are very loose examples, but show a large regeneration project doesn't have to be as nauseatingly upmarket & exclusive as this one looks set to be.

 

[lang rabbie]

Was I the only person to think of Terry Gilliam's Brazil when I saw
this rather surreal image from the Parkview website

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Funny you should say that. In the library we have videos of lectures that we lend out to those undergraduates who were too lazy to get up and watch them first time round. They all have codes (e.g. OG9 would be one in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology series) and when a student starts asking for one by the name of the lecturer or the title of the lecture, I ask them to tell me the code. Which always reminds me of the waiter: "you have to say the number".

 

[ViolentPanda]

one reason i can speculate that it has taken so long to reach any sort of agreement on how it will be reused is that in order to reuse the site there will probably be substantial remediation costs involved. for any developer to consider undertaking this along with all the other planning gain costs that wandsworth are going to ask for they ahve ahd to find a scheme that will allow them to buy the site, cover their own build costs and planning gain costs and to still make a profit for themselves. if they didnt they wouldnt be doing it. i dont see a whole long list of public sector bodies lining up to redevelop the site do you?

A cynic writes.

There were scurrilous (or not, depending on your bent) rumours flying round back in the eighties that the site was being left to rot, the rumours only being reinforced by the lack of any work being done on the site by each new owner.

It would make financial sense as well, of course. let the power station fall down (parts of it are only held up with scaffolding now anyway) and you've got the whole 21 or so acres (IIRC) to play with, and you can honestly tell EH or whoever it is who deals with destruction of listed buildings "sorry guv, natural wear and tear/act of g-d, innit?"
The amount of time that has passed also enables an unscrupulous developer to "lose" all those surveys telling him about the scale of contamination of the site rendering parts of it unfit for housing...

 

[Giles]

It amazes me how relatively short an operational life-span it had.

It's such a London icon, but the whole "four chimneys" weren't completed til the 50s and it was shut by 1983.

It would make a brilliant venue for a nightclub. They could call it, errrmmm, let me see, "The Power Station", or something.

Giles..

 

[corporate whore]

Here's some guff from the Guardian about wot it's all gonna look like.

Bad: 2,700 car park spaces
Good: 25m refurb for Battersea Park station, new pedestrian footbridge across the Thames
Silly: One table restaurants at the top of each chimney..

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Curiously enough they are in receipt of an email from my good self about said article.

 

[corporate whore]

Did you send an email because the article's a fawning critically-devoid puff-piece?

Tell me it's so..

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Dear Guardian

Jonathan Glancey may hail as visionary the plans for Battersea Power Station, but some Londoners may feel a site of thirty acres might have been used for more socially valuable purposes than offices, hotels and an exhibition venue. London is short of none of these, but is short of social and affordable housing, of which the Battersea site could have provided a good deal. This might not be as creative as Mr Glancey might like, nor "pull this down-at-heel part of Battersea into the well-heeled economy of the north bank", but it might have had the rather decent effect of providing housing for people who need it. But what is that, compared to "a sensual, subtle office complex", or a walkway with a bar?

Yours

 

[Skim]

Bad: 2,700 car park spaces

Just what traffic-choked (and tube station-less) Battersea needs – a huge car park

I've no idea how the development could accommodate that many cars, as there's too much traffic in the area already. (It's improved since the congestion charge, though, or certainly has on Battersea Park road around rush hour.)

 

[girasol]

first:

Obviously the power station itself wouldn't make great housing material, but there's a huge area around it which would...

As for the power house, I always think of Pink Floyd's Animals album when I see it!

then:

Wouldn't miss it if it went, tbh. Wish it had graced Pink Floyd's 'Relics' album cover, rather than 'Dark Side..' 'cos that's what it is. IMHO, naturally..

I wonder on how many people's ignore lists I must be in!

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Rather reminsicent of the famous lyrics to Live And Let Die...

 

[jæd]

Just what traffic-choked (and tube station-less) Battersea needs – a huge car park

Um, how else are people going to get there then...?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Battersea Park railway station. (Mind you, if they do it'll be goodbye to my seat on the train to work.)