Power station

The press release yesterday started with the sentence, “Nearly forty years after the lights were switched off at one of London’s best loved landmarks ...”. It was announcing the grand opening of Battersea Power Station as a retail and leisure complex rather than an actual power station. This event has been decades in the making. The place stopped generating power in 1983 and there have been all sorts of plans. At one time a plan for a theme park was put forward.  In 2012 they started works on the redevelopment of the entire area - which continues even now - but the shopping centre is more-or-less open.

We made dinner plans this evening at a restaurant at Circus West, part of the complex, and arrived earn 6pm to meet Mel and explore the shops before dinner.   Each of the old turbine halls is now a shopping mall with a mix of shops, bars and restaurants.  Most of the shops are on the expensive side. There’s Boss, Abercrombie & Fitch, Reiss and Ralph Lauren. If you like expensive wrist wear there’s Breitling, Omega, Rolex, Swatch, Tag Heur, Tudor and Watches of Switzerland.  I didn’t know so many people needed to know the time. There’s even a Polestar car showroom.

It’s been really well done. There are multiple levels of shops and restaurants. There remains a lot of retail space boarded up with ‘coming soon’ type notices but still plenty to see.  I don’t know if the Cinema was open today, the Control Room cocktail bar has a big queue but we have a reservation for that in a couple of weeks.  One of the main attractions will be a lift ride up a chimney but that’s not yet open and we are on a waiting list. Around the space there appear to be original industrial components from the building’s days as a power station that remain. They looked convincing to my uninformed eye. They may have been fakes. The overall art deco design aesthetic has been maintained and the place feels very modern. 

The whole place provokes a mixture of feeling. Simultaneously it is impressive that so much has been achieved from the derelict building that once stood here and sad that the only thing the world can do with a space like this is turn it into a mix of expensive shops, offices and restaurants in a shrine to consumerism.  I wonder if it will be able to retain its high-end feeling?