START CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MASTERPLAN DESIGNS POWER VIEW GEHRY F+P FUTURE MILESTONES FASHION ZONE PARKLIFE VALUES PUBLIC LIVING BATTERSEA POWERH OU S E BATTERSEA POWER STATION MAGAZINE BATTERSEAPOWERSTATION.CO.UK ISSUE º. 3 — SUMMER 2014 Living Architecture ‘A GIGANTIC EXEMPLAR OF CREATIVE RE-USE’ STEPHEN BAYLEY ON BATTERSEA • VIEW FROM THE TOP NEW LIFE FOR THE POWER STATION CHIMNEYS • IN THE ZONE A NEW EMBASSY FOR A NEW QUARTER • GEHRY PARTNERS AND FOSTER + PARTNERS MEET THE DESIGN TEAMS START CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MASTERPLAN DESIGNS POWER VIEW GEHRY F+P FUTURE MILESTONES FASHION ZONE PARKLIFE VALUES PUBLIC LIVING BATTERSEA ISSUE º. 3 SUMMER 2014 04_ INTRODUCTION 32_ THE MILESTONES By Design Critic and Author, Stephen Bayley Facts, figures and construction timeline 08_ MASTERPLAN SNAPSHOT 34_ A BACKDROP TO BEAUTY An overview of the Battersea Power Station masterplan High-fashion and heritage brands at The Power Station 10_ DESIGNS FOR LIVING 42_ IN THE ZONE Who are the Phase 1-3 architects? Nine Elms, the Diplomatic Quarter and connectivity 12_ POWER PLAYERS 46_ PARKLIFE A look at the architects’ key projects Summer in the Pop Up Park 16_ VIEW FROM THE TOP 50_ THE VALUE OF VALUES The reconstruction of the famous chimneys The pledges that are defining Battersea Power Station’s future 20_ Q&A WITH FRANK GEHRY 56_ PUBLIC PROPERTY A discussion of his designs at Battersea Power Station A destination awaits… 24_ IN CONVERSATION WITH 58_ LIVING ARCHITECTURE Foster + Partners’ Grant Brooker and Andy Bow Beautiful objects designed by the Phase 3 architects 28_ SHOP, WORK, LUNCH, PLAY 64_ MY BATTERSEA Head of Leasing , Jo Skilton, sketches out the future By Sales Manager, Georgia Siri 1 START CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MASTERPLAN DESIGNS POWER VIEW GEHRY F+P FUTURE MILESTONES FASHION ZONE PARKLIFE VALUES PUBLIC LIVING BATTERSEA THE FEATURED CONTENT –– CONTR IBUT O R S –– Editor David Taylor Additional Material Stephen Bayley Simon Cawte Jennifer Haggart Design VIEW FROM THE TOP SHOP, WORK, LUNCH, PLAY wordsearch.co.uk 16 A look at the unique, technically complex restoration 28 Head of Leasing, Jo Skilton, discusses the future of the of The Power Station’s famous chimneys. commercial elements of Battersea Power Station. Illustrations Konstantinos Palaiologos Peter Reynolds Rebecca Lea Williams Photography Andrew Woffinden, pages 34-41 Cover Images Emeco Chair, by Foster + Partners, 2006 Vitra Wiggle Chair, by Frank Gehry, 1969-73 A BACKDROP TO BEAUTY LIVING ARCHITECTURE 34 From high-fashion and heritage brands, to niche chic and one-off 58 Household items designed by Foster + Partners and Frank Gehry designers, Battersea Power Station will reflect the Best of London. are as much about art as they are about purpose. BATTERSEAPOWERSTATION.CO.UK The contents and information contained in this brochure are intended for general marketing purposes only and should not be relied upon by any person as being complete or accurate. BPSDC, its employees, agents and other representatives will not accept any liability suffered or incurred by any person arising out of or in connection with any reliance on the content of or information contained in this brochure. Facts and figures are correct as at September 2014. 2 3 START CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MASTERPLAN DESIGNS POWER VIEW GEHRY F+P FUTURE MILESTONES FASHION ZONE PARKLIFE VALUES PUBLIC LIVING BATTERSEA “ INTRODUCTION by Stephen Bayley It doesn’t matter if you call this survival or revival, a precious, but once he London Power beginning to describe my like the anthropologists’ myth Company! What a ‘hood as ‘the Embassy Quarter.’ of the perpetual return. brilliant name for Grosvenor Square arrives on T Battersea Power Station went a business. Metropolitan Nine Elms Lane in 2017. Vickers! Even better. They off-line in 1983. For some reason, wretched, part of are now long gone, but their But the district was always no one thought of demolition. host remains. Battersea Power rather special: I smile ruefully Less elegantly, it was left to Station is south London’s most at the batches of tourist- crumble. It was Grade II* listed outstanding building. photographers who still in 1980 and afterwards stood, populate the north shore, in ever-shabbier defiance, as a London is going to I have lived nearby for more trying to capture an image reprimand to the whole nation’s than 30 years. To a young, poor, of a noble building that The lost industrial past and London’s newly-married house-hunter, Beatles, Pink Floyd and own neglected municipal pride. the area south of Chelsea and Batman have, in any case, It was an architectural corpse Westminster appealed because, made ineradicable in collective haunting its own graveyard, in 1983, it was the unlikely, memory. New York’s Big Alice like an Art Deco Tintern live and breathe but welcome, combination of seems trite in comparison. Abbey. Everyone loved it, but ‘central’ and ‘cheap.’ These were everyone was also dismayed by the positive attributes. More I love this London dynamic. its becoming a symbol of metro negative were the terrible traffic We simultaneously cling to decay and lost willpower. (with never even a possibility traditions, yet are equally keen again. of a black cab), an ugly sense to trash them. There is an old So much so that Simon Jenkins, of being an outcast and a map which says ‘Proposed the twinkly-eyed guardian of generalised miasma of failure Theme Park’ where you would London’s architectural identity, and neglect. expect to find Battersea Power once suggested that the best Station. This was the time I solution was for the crumbling There was an historic period arrived here: in a desperate wreck to be stabilised as a ruin THE DESIGN CRITIC AND AUTHOR when people, as well as taxis, muddle of can-do optimism and all attempts at restoration STEPHEN BAYLEY DISCUSSES THE refused to come ‘south.’ I still and unreflective vanity, Mrs. or renewal be acknowledged have W11 friends who think me Thatcher had encouraged Alton as futile. Even more extreme, WINDS OF CHANGE BLOWING insane. But, while my sanity Towers to rescue one of the I once myself even suggested remains debatable, everything city’s favourite monuments. that the only solution was to THROUGH BATTERSEA else has now changed. Ambitious It never happened. Successive tear it down since The Power estate agents are, courtesy developers went through a tragic Station’s looming presence of twitched and fretful US cycle of deranged optimism- clearly hobbled all attempts diplomats bent on relocation, funding-crisis-collapse. It was at resurrection. 4 ISSUE 03 POWERHOUSE INTRODUCTION 5 START CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MASTERPLAN DESIGNS POWER VIEW GEHRY F+P FUTURE MILESTONES FASHION ZONE PARKLIFE VALUES PUBLIC LIVING BATTERSEA “ Personally, I think it is intellectually lazy to damn development. Regent’s Park and Bedford Square were developers’ projects and we like them well enough. I actually knew this to be true Yet I spend a lot of time like them well enough. Instead, because Terence Conran and arguing with local interest I’d like to see developers more I had once scouted The Power groups, myopic and costive, responsive to public utility Station as a possible home for our who, bizarrely in my view, and I’d like to see residents’ future Design Museum. Alistair now say they prefer retaining groups more tolerant of McAlpine was sent to the site for heartless wasteland to the new buildings. Between the purposes of a professional risk of development. But complacency and hysteria builder’s appraisal. He returned they never had a better idea. there is room for intelligent from Europe’s largest brick- Indeed, the very best ideas discourse; there is still scope built structure to report that anybody had for the Vauxhall for creative intervention in necessary re-pointing alone Nine Elms Battersea (VNEB) Europe’s biggest building site. would exceed even Conran’s littoral included a Ready fortune. As others before and Mixed Concrete Depot, a It is excellent that Battersea since, we abandoned the project. Post Office and a long since Power Station is set to become defunct warehouse of the long a gigantic exemplar of creative There are several since defunct Her Majesty’s re-use. But there’s even more misunderstandings about Stationery Office. This on the history hereabouts: not far Battersea Power Station. In opposite shore to Thomas away, John Tradescant created short-hand, people say it is Cubitt’s and Norman Shaw’s his ‘Ark,’ the country’s first a design by Sir Giles Gilbert London, the finest domestic museum. And in the louche Scott, but in truth the exterior architecture ever made. People Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, was largely determined by used to say that London ‘turned Jonathan Tyers created the J. Theo Halliday who, if we its back on the river.’ This is world’s first theme park. are honest, was working to what they meant. a brief determined more by But I don’t want ‘my’ London considerations of engineering I don’t admire all the new to be either a museum or a than architecture. The other buildings proposed here: two theme park. I want it to be misunderstandings belong to judges of the US Embassy a living city. That will only Simon Jenkins and me: at last, competition abstained in happen when developers Battersea is getting powered-up despair at its artistic mediocrity. speak to real people and real again. It doesn’t matter if you people speak to developers. call this survival or revival, a There are those that fear the That’s always been a challenge, precious, but once wretched, site will soon be over-built but Battersea has got them part of London is going to live and rammed with soul-less, talking.•STEPHEN BAYLEY and breathe again.