Battersea Power Station

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The Battersea Power Station is a coal-fired power plant in London, to 1983 from 1933 in operation. She is one of the largest brick building in Europe and is on the south bank of the Thames near the Grosvenor Bridge.

History

At the beginning of the 20th century produced in London a number of small power stations as great a variety of different voltages and frequencies. Electrical machinery were therefore usually custom-made or had to be adapted to the respective available supply. In the 1920s, the private London Power Company tried to centralize power and standardize.

1929 began the construction of Battersea Power Station. It was designed by the architect Giles Gilbert Scott, on the Waterloo Bridge, Bankside Power Station (now Tate Modern), the Liverpool Cathedral and the red telephone booths go back. The building has a steel skeleton which is externally clad with brick. By the end of World War II was the Battersea Power Station from the elongated block A with two chimneys. The interior was fitted with a control center in the Art Deco style, a lined with Italian marble turbine hall and wrought iron staircases. In 1933, Block A went into operation. The generators eventually delivered 243 megawatts at 11,000 volts.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Battersea Power Station to the (external to the block A largely identical ) Block B has been expanded. The block B was completed in 1948 and the power plant received his final appearance for the time being with four powerful, white chimneys, more than 110 meters high. Overall, the two blocks now contributed 503 megawatts, in the 1950s, the Battersea Power Station was thus the third largest power station in Britain. Each year, one million tons of coal were converted into electrical energy.

Block A was switched off in 1975 after 42 years of operation, block B was commissioned in 1983 after 35 years of operation from the mains. In 1988, turbines and boilers were removed. To this end, the roof was covered, which was located about thirty feet above the ground. The roof has not been restored, so that the interior of the building is exposed to the weather since then.

Cultural impact

The Battersea Power Station is shown on music albums of many British pop and rock bands. Best known is the picture on the cover of the 1977 album Animals published by Pink Floyd, showing the power station floating with a large fabric pig between the chimneys. Other examples include the album Quadrophenia by The Who (1973 ), Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld by The Orb, Live Frogs: Set 2 by Les Claypool 's Frog Brigade ( a cover version of Animals ) and Power Ballads by London Elektricity.

The power plant was the scene for the film Sabotage by Alfred Hitchcock (1936) and is also in the movie The Meaning of Life by Monty Python to see. In the film 1984, it housed the Ministry of Truth. In the film Children of Men (2006) was the building of exhibition space for rescued from around the world of art. Also, the flying pig appears in the film.

Lately, the power plant for performances (concerts, Cirque du Soleil ) was used. In Ian McKellen's film version of Shakespeare's theater play Richard III. serves the power plant as a surrealistic interpretation of the Battle of Bosworth. For the " Chelsea Fringe " in 2013, the power plant will serve as an exhibition space.

Future

After 1988, it was agreed in principle that the Battersea Power Station should be preserved and used; However, they found no consistent approach. The idea of ​​creating a recreational or theme park, was discarded because the environment would have been no match for the expected traffic. Plans to create an event center with hotels and conference rooms, also failed. While the plans came to nothing, the building fell more and more.

In the meantime, the company Parkview International acquired the building along with land and began planning a 750- million pound remodeling project. There were plans for two hotels, a theater, a cinema, apartments and restaurants.

In October 2005 Parkview, English Heritage and the London Borough of Wandsworth could announce that the chimneys of the power station are irreparable and should be removed. Although Parkview stressed that they wanted to build the chimneys again, there was resistance from local citizens groups.

On 30 November 2006, the company Real Estate Opportunities (REO ) announced that it had acquired for 595 million euro, the Battersea Power Station and the surrounding land. REO also let it be known that all Parkview plans were discarded, and the New York architect Rafael Viñoly was entrusted with the re-planning. In 2008, REO presented remodeling plans before with a volume of 4 billion pounds. These plans are part of a larger plan to transform the London neighborhood Nine Elms. The power plant building should be renovated and partially used again as a power plant, biomass and waste as fuels. The four chimneys should be used for the derivation of steam. The former turbine hall should be converted into a shopping mall; from the roofless boiler house, a park should be. The old building should also take up a museum of energy. But the renovation of the building structure was estimated at 150 million pounds. To the east of the power plant to be built with transparent facade called " Eco - Dome" a large building. The building should have a 300 meters high and 30 meters in diameter transparent ventilation tower; this was then discarded in favor of a series of smaller towers. These towers should (compared to conventional buildings ) reduce the energy consumption of the building by 67 % by letting cool air to circulate through the building. The Eco -Dome was record offices as well as 3200 homes for 7000 people.

An essential component of the plan was to extend the London Underground. The planned expansion of the Northern Line to Nine Elms and Battersea should cost £ 350 million and are supported by REO and other major landowners in Nine Elms and would thus have been the first ever privately paid extension of the London Underground network.

In a 2008 survey voted 66 percent of the population to the new plans. As part of an event at the power plant on 23 March 2009 it was announced that REO had submitted the plans as a proposal to Wandsworth Council. The Council gave its approval on November 11.

REO hoping for a start of construction in 2011; but this had to be postponed to 2012. It was expected that the old building structure can be saved and repaired until 2016 and that the entire project was completed in 2020. The plans called 3400 apartments and 3.5 million square feet of office space for an estimated 28,000 residents and 25,000 workers.

In December 2011, REO went bankrupt. The architect Terry Farrell suggested a partial demolition of the building, in which only the gable walls and chimneys restored, the nave walls but should be demolished and replaced by equal colonnades structures, making the appearance of the building would have been substantially preserved.

In April 2012, the power plant for 600 million euros was offered for sale.

On 4 May 2012, the soccer club Chelsea FC announced that he had submitted an offer to purchase the property. Chelsea was planning a new stadium; the four chimneys should be retained. On June 6, 2012, two companies received the award from Malaysia, who wanted to invest more than 1.7 billion euros in the 15.8 hectare site. There should be a new neighborhood with homes, offices, shops and a 1400m2 large library arise. In the middle of building a shopping street to be built, surrounded on both sides by apartments. The planning took over again Rafael Viñoly. Frank Gehry is the eastern, Norman Foster designed the western part of the plant.