Up in the air ... Will a futuristic tower solve Battersea power station's problems?
Is it all blarney? The latest in a long line of redevelopment schemes for Battersea power station, one of Britain's most famous abandoned buildings, announced today by the Irish property tycoons Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett, is certainly the most ambitious.
While the Art Deco power station is to be converted into the inevitable shopping mall, it will be twinned with a huge office complex naturally ventilated by a transparent, 300m-high funnel rising from an enormous transparent dome. This, says Rafael Vinoly, the New York-based Uruguayan architect in charge of the design, will cool the giant new building below so effectively that it won't need air conditioning. Blocks of flats housing thousands as well as fashionable shops would complement this highly unusual and extraordinarily dramatic office complex.
The tower would be one of the two tallest buildings in London, rivalling Renzo Piano's up-and-coming London Bridge Shard, but its sheer scale is premised on the construction of a spur of the Northern line of the Underground. Without it, the power station will feel as cut-off as it always been. Whether Mayor Boris Johnson and Transport for London will fall for the intriguing logic of the scheme, and a bit of Irish and Latin American charm, remains to be seen.
Redevelopment schemes have come and gone since this imperious building was finally decommissioned in 1983. Developers, however, while forced to dream up a workable future for the Grade II*-listed ruin, have really had their eyes on the huge amount of land around this erstwhile Thamesside temple of power. Think of all the bling shops and City slicker flats (sorry, "exclusive, luxury river-view apartments") that could be squeezed onto the site. And at what profit.
And, yet, to date, the power station has thwarted all comers. There is no doubt that the building is a major challenge to architects and developers alike, while the site remains distant from the rest of central London. Unlike its sibling, Bankside, slap-bang opposite St Paul's Cathedral and now the hugely popular tourist magnet we know as Tate Modern, Battersea is somewhat out on a limb. And perhaps it always looked at its best from a distance, especially when seen through the windows of trains rumbling across bridges and viaducts, or from boats on the Thames itself.
The power station was an Art Deco masterpiece, with a cinematic interior designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and built between 1929 and 1955. It was closed in two phases, as its pair of magnificent steam turbines spun for the last time, in 1975 and 1983. Margaret Thatcher's "favourite businessman", Sir John Broome, owner of Alton Towers, the Staffordshire theme park, promised to turn it into a similar visitor attraction, but things went pear-shaped and, having stripped the historic building of its roof, he sold it on to the Hong Kong property tycoon Victor Hwang.
Wang's Parkview company came up with two schemes, one designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, architect of the Waterloo International Eurostar terminal (now abandoned) and the Eden Project in Cornwall. This was succeeded by a glamorous proposal led by Cecil Balmond, the Arup engineer, and boasted such wonders as a rooftop hotel designed by Ron Arad with rooms linked by tube-like shuttles. It was wondrous stuff, but it was hard to believe it would ever happen. It didn't.
Hwang sold on to Ronan and Barrett, whose project is so ambitious that even they talk of a completion date of 2020. They also talk of "carbon neutrality", but as every new building development in London is said to be "sustainable" today, it is hard to know.
Vinoly is an interesting architect, and Ronan and Barrett ambitious developers; even then, I can't help feeling that this project is more than a little over-the-top. If only someone could turn the hulk into either London's first truly green power station, or perhaps transform it into a museum of science and technology (think of all the room inside). They could still build the best new publicly owned housing estate in London, and add a few good shops - oh, and a regular riverbus to central London.
But this latest scheme, though not altogether hot air, is still a design too far. Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid.
