The Future of the Past: Battersea Power Station

Since the failure of the Rafael Viñoly plan for Battersea Power Station (a photo is in this blog entry), there has been much excitement afoot with regards to the future of the building and the site.  Perhaps a little prematurely, Google Maps is already showing the proposed extension of the Charing Cross branch out west.

 (Unbuilt).

Terry Farrell (him what done the MI6 building, the Home Office, and, oh, Charing Cross...) has chipped in a vision for BPS, one which involves retaining just the front and back walls, and knocking the rest down.

Eerily high Thames.  Has the Barrier failed?

The casual observer might not realise quite how much of the power station this 'modern ruins' plan would involve removing.  Compare with the below pic of the current state of the building.

And what are those ghostly buildings we can see flanking BPS in Farrell's publicity image?  Of course - flats.  Lots and lots of flats.  Those are the reason here for the plans to preserve yet minimise the current building - lots of lovely space for riverview apartments.  Note also that none of the publicity shots for the proposal show the umpteen tracks of mainline trains (compare with the Google screen grab at the top) that pass close to the power station - and even closer to many of the flats.  The below Farrell image rather cutely fades all the train tracks to a soothing and neutral grey, whilst emphasising the verdant greens around the BPS shell (and Battersea Park, on the other side of the train lines).

Compare the density of flats in the Farrell scheme to those of the 50s Churchill Estate in Pimlico, in the top right of the image.

Another plan, by Allies & Morrison (thems what redone the Royal Festival Hall), is to turn BPS into a 11,000-seater concert venue.

From the CG sketches, it looks like much of the brick would be maintained - the bdonline site notes that the 'former coal bunker area and Grade II listed Water Pumping Station will be kept. Housing would be built on surrounding land.'  Ah, housing again.  I wonder how much of that there will be, and quite how close is would be to the trains and venue...  The Morrison proposal also features a really horrible sketch of what appears to be the apocalypse drawn on an Etch-A-Sketch.  Shudder.

What are those lines in the sky?  The vapour trails from incoming warheads?  The very fabric of reality breaking down?

Another proposal for BPS is to use it as Chelsea FC's new stadium.  The Daily Mirror has a lovely 16-bit graphics mock-up image of the results.  I wonder how many fans could be crammed into that space (considering the Morrison venue proposal would host just 11,000). The rest of the grounds would be... 'shops, offices and affordable housing.'  Oh, housing.

You'd've thought they'd bother to landscape the area around the stadium.

All of the above plans seem something of a distraction.  There's no particular interest in BPS itself, just a desire to secure planning permission to build shed loads of flats on some lovely land.

So what do I think should happen to BPS?  Well, I quite fancy turning it into some sort of gated Children of Men Ark of Arts (a sort-of fascist Tate Modern).  

Or, ideally, a really lovely Moderne flat.  For me.

But, before any of this happens, the BPS grounds will be used as a giant car park for itinerant police vehicles during the Olympics.  Woohoo.