Battersea Power Station, then and now: Two Sides of the Same Coin

LONDON, UK — My exploration of the Battersea Power Station began with a stranger at the Hoxton Holborn.

Her name was Ros, a recent graduate from the outskirts of London. She asked me to watch her stuff so she could order a coffee, but we soon began to talk—I gave her the gossip on people at NYU (which was of no relevance to her) and she gave me a rundown of the most underrated places in London (which was very relevant for me).

She never told me her favorite place outright, but after a few updates and responses, it became obvious.

“I went to Neal’s Yard today,” I told her. “It was so cool!!”

“Yay! But now you have to go see Battersea Power Station.” Her response was always along those lines.

Naturally, I began to research. Built in the early 1900s, Battersea Power Station was a power station (I know. Crazy, right?) that produced electricity for some of London’s most important buildings, including the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. It was a powerhouse for the elite class, I suppose.

In 1983, it became functionally obsolete, though within a few years, corporations and investors began buying and trying (and repeatedly failing) to repurpose it. After blowing billions of dollars and 40 years of switching-hands, a reconstruction plan was finally successful, and the building opened to the public in late 2022.

The result, an intersection between modernity and the historical infrastructure, seemed incredible. Its original purpose as an energy-generator was re-imagined, this time with sustainable energy, using three new combined heat and power (CHP) engines. Not only a champion of the sustainability movement, Battersea Power Station was built with the community in mind.

It was a recreational haven. There were already over 140 shops and restaurants, and space to expand. There were tourist attractions: a lift that takes you through a repurposed chimney, straight into the sky, and in the wintertime, an ice-skating rink decorated with holiday lights and cheery vibes.

It was a well-equipped professional space. There was a designated coworking office, open 24-hours, with multiple floors set aside from the rest of the mall, free from distractions and furnished with its own café.

Once you’d enter, you’d never want or need to leave. And you didn’t have to if you lived in one of more than 4,000 apartments offered by the complex (254 of which are directly in the power station!).

I had to see it. And standing before it, I was in awe. It was huge, towering, and beautiful.

The inside was clean, but almost in an eerie way. The sides were lined with high-end stores, the elevators made of glass, the ceilings exposed so I could see the vents and pipes. Some of the hardware served as a homage to its original functionality.

One of two wings in the building

I made a quick round of the mall (I had a blog post to write, and it was so massive that I was sure I couldn’t cover it all before the end of the day) before deciding to settle down in the co-working space, the repurposed Engine Room.

There was quite a bit of confusion as to where this Engine Room was, and when I finally found it, I came to the disappointing realization that it was locked.

I was left with no choice but to wait for the next person to leave and sneak in before the door shut. Clearly, I wasn’t supposed to be there. It wasn’t the most ethical thing to do, but I let it slide as a cost of ‘investigative journalism.’

After a quick web search (which I should have done before trying to get into this forbidden office), I discovered that office usage started from 505 GBP per month, which seemed horrible until I saw the day office rate, which started at 149 GBP per day. And for my fellow Americans, this is much more expensive than you may be inclined to think.

The Second Floor of the Engine Room. It’s a nice study space, but £149 a day?

This wasn’t a space made for the people. I searched the web to see what the general British opinion was on the reconstruction. “Every square inch monetised,” the Guardian’s blaring headline read.

The local community did not seem happy with Battersea’s re-invention.

When the redevelopment plan was first announced, the architects promised that 15 percent of the housing units would be affordable, a proportion already well below the 50-percent affordable housing target set by London’s Housing Commission. By the end of the project, this figure shrunk to 9 percent, and this decision was made in the face of the housing crisis in London and Wandsworth (the area surrounding Battersea Power Station).

And the new energy generation is supposed to be more sustainable, but it runs on gas. Common belief is that gas is a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but it isn’t really. The combustion of natural gas releases methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times better than CO2… at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

It’s a beautiful mall, and maybe it's more sustainable than other historical English infrastructure, but it can’t keep acting like it was built for the people and world in mind. It was a servant to the elites at its peak, and a century later, I think it still is.

Perfectly symmetric. One side mirrors the other, just as its present mirrors its past.