Lessons On Battersea Power Station

We Heart has gone and learnt a load about Battersea Power Station at a reacent talk about its design heritage.

The snippet below is from the piece but you can read the full story and see further images here.

‘Battersea Power Station was actually two individual power stations, in a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built 1927 -1933, and Battersea B Power Station, to its east, was added 1955-1957. The two stations were built to an identical design, providing the now infamous four-chimney layout.

Prior to the construction of Battersea Power Station, small power companies, created to service specific industries or factories, sold excess electricity to the public. Varying standards of voltage and frequency led to a decision by parliament in 1925 to standardise supply and bring it under public ownership. Plans for a small number of very large power stations, including the first one to be at Battersea, were born.

The Southbank site was chosen in 1927 because it was central to the area it would be supplying and close to the Thames – crucial for coal delivery and cooling water. Theo J. Halliday was employed as the architect with Halliday & Agate Co. as a sub-consultant.

There was immediate controversy – there were concerns that the power station would be too big (it’s still the largest brick building in Europe), that it would be an eyesore and that it would pollute London’s air, water, parks, buildings – and even the paintings in the Tate Gallery across the river.

Eventually, in 1930, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, a well-regarded architect and the man behind the design of the trademark K2 telephone box, was brought in to style the building and appease the critics. Although Halliday was responsible for the initial exterior designs and the entire interior, Scott is usually credited as the architect. He in fact hated the towers – he proposed replacing them with square ones – and is said to be embarrassed by the praise now heaped upon him.

Nonetheless the resulting restrained jazz modern style of the ‘brick cathedral’ was immediate very popular. It was described as a “temple of power”; ranking equal with St Paul’s Cathedral as a London landmark. Its picture ran under the headline ‘Modern architecture for modern industry’ in the Listener in 1933 and a survey of celebrities voted it their second favourite building in the Architects Journal in 1939.’