The Power Station as seen from the Apartment
Battersea Power Station seems to hold a place in the imaginations of many Londoners. Photographs never quite capture its immensity – and its towering brutal symmetry exherts some kind of magnetic force. Long since decommissioned and severely damaged due to the ingress of rain after one of many failed restoration attempts, the station has just failed once again to attract the funds required to give it a new purpose and life. It seems probable that it will eventually fall. Perhaps it’s just this gradual decay that gives it such mystery. The station appears in almost every future dystopian film made in the last decade (probably most notably as the Arc of the Arts, in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men”) and in reality it is a reminder of our dystopian present. Even in its peak it was an inefficient coal-fired power station, using the waters of the Thames as its coolant.