Battersea Power Station - The strange yet persistent allure of the industrialised megalith

There was a question that persistently nagged at me whilst forming part of the inquisitive bovine line herding its way, as though into an abattoir, through Battersea Power Station during Open House London in September.....

What exactly is it that people find so consistently interesting and appealing about this hulking relic of industrialised Britain festering on the southern bank of the Thames since it was decommissioned in 1983?

It you could have conducted a straw poll amongst the 14,000 visitors to the site over the weekend, I believe the results would have been a fairly vague mish-mash of obfuscations or certainly, in the main, nothing more concrete than a sense of curious obligation.

But what is it really that prolongs the power station’s place in our affection and intrigue? What role does its slumbering presence play for the 21st century Londoner?

My strong hunch is that it stems from a sense of nostalgia for an industrial Britain that no longer exists. It is an architectural talisman that serves as a physical manifestation of the generative power that once fuelled the city. It is a monolithic relic from a by-gone era which has, in recent years, enjoyed a renaissance in terms of public opinion. Already, the beginnings of such a trend can be seen developing with regard to the post-war Brutalism period, with sites such as the Barbican and Trellick Tower acquiring a fresh verglas of appreciation.

With the ruins of Battersea Power Station representing the lapse of early-20th century modernism, it is ironic that its resuscitation should be by the electrotherapy of early-21st century post-post-modernism. That is, the predominance of banal steel-and-glass or colourfully cladded luxury accommodation; buildings whereby form very often follows miserably behind function (see the Shard, the Gherkin, et al), and the transformation of every urban space into a commercialised, highly-lucrative commodity. In this particular instance, transmogrifying the power station into some kind of gigantic Costa Coffee.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Battersea could be seen as a sort of synecdoche for the way Britain has evolved to accommodate its past – that seismic shift from producers to consumers, from being the globally competitive generators of ‘stuff’ to the proud yet backward-looking, service-providing nation of 2013.

As much as the tenor of this essay may be suffering from a subsidence into cynicism, make no mistake, I was grateful for the chance to satisfy my own curiosity when it came to the power station, even if I wasn’t really sure why. Pivoting slowly around, it felt like I was standing in the belly of some giant, desiccated animal, its four skeletal limbs still sturdy whilst the rest of its flesh and muscle tissue had withered into atrophy.

Like an awful lot of people (more, I’d be willing to wager, than would be prepared to admit it), my first association of the power station stemmed from the iconic Pink Floyd album cover for ‘Animals’.

And yet, I can’t help but remain perplexed by the way this association has almost become dyed into the socio-cultural fabric, given that the album itself stands as one of Pink Floyd’s ‘overlooked’ efforts, sandwiched chronologically between more famous works ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘The Wall’. I would have loved to have taken another straw poll of visitors to see who had actually listened to ‘Animals’ all the way through.

The album itself, which was released in the height of the ‘punk explosion’ in 1977, has always struck me as just as nihilistic, scathing or ire-inflected as anything gobbed out by punk. For all that Johnny Rotten may have declared ‘I hate Pink Floyd’, ‘Animals’ is, to my mind at least, one of the finest ‘punk albums’ of that period. The unforgettable album cover by Hipgnosis can itself be interpreted in this way. The power station is a symbol of the toiling working class of the stagnant and, by then, outdated industrial era, watched over by the despotic elite as represented by the flying pig.

My own elaboration on this reading is that it signifies that with the abandoning of industrial endeavours in pursuit of an American-style market capitalism, pigs will fly before Britain regains the strength, muscle and raw power of which Battersea Power Station is so emblematic.

This is all very well, but leaving Pink Floyd and the power of popular culture on ‘groupthink’ aside, the development and lifetime of Battersea Power Station throws up some other interesting points.

The Turbine A half of the power station became fully operational in 1935, before embryonically splitting and creating Turbine B in 1955. At this time it became the largest brick building in Europe, a title it still holds claim to today.

The apex of its prime saw it generating roughly a fifth of London’s electricity, whilst boasting the credential of thermal efficiency that surpassed all other stations. Yet by the 1970s this efficiency was on the wane, the pollution being churned out was firmly at odds with the dawning eco-consciences of the time, and the station was conclusively decommissioned in 1983.

It is this, relatively speaking, brief operational lifespan that seems slightly at odds with its resurgent claim on the public purse-strings of affection.. Its fellow South-Thames compatriot Bankside Power Station – given a transfusion of contemporary art to become the Tate Modern – was operational for a similarly ‘temporary’ 29 years before closing in 1981.

If this were the accepted useful lifespan for other notable buildings in the capital, the Gherkin would have only another 30 years or so before needing to be reassessed. Likewise, the Shard’s functionality would need serious sharpening around the year 2060, and St. Paul’s Cathedral should retrospectively have been mothballed decades ago. Daft conjecture aside, I think the point is a valid one, that placed in context Battersea Power Station’s enduring allure is seemingly at odds with its transitory utility.

Another important factor that provides an insight into the affection it inspires is, I think, its resilience as an underdog beating away countless big business investors trying to bend it to their own will. It has remained since the early 80s as London’s white elephant slumbering on the savannah of Nine Elms, batting away proposals for renovation – everything from a theme park to a football ground – as though they were little more than pesky fleas.

The latest contractors are a Malaysian consortium of property developers who have already begun Phase 1 of the project to rejuvenate the site with all the glossy apparel and finement of 21st century ‘luxury apartments’. All have already been sold of course, mostly to overseas millionaires who will no doubt parachute in a handful of times each year. That or they’ve been bought for student children of elite parents so that they can study in one of London’s premier universities.

I wouldn’t say I was bitter, only that quite a large part of me hopes the ramshackle power station has one more fight left in it and manages to avoid being wrestled to the ground by yet another ambitious project proposal. Wouldn’t it be great if this stubborn London icon could maintain its status as the ‘unmanageable project’, the untameable beast lying docile on the banks of the Thames. It could be made safe and then left open for people to meander freely through as an innovative and inspiring new public space.

I fear this is pointless idealism. Soon, the pigs will no longer be flying above Battersea Power Station, instead they’ll be living inside it.