Battersea Power station is an iconic landmark in part due to it being featured on the cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ album cover art. It’s a piece of British archetectural heritage that should be preserved. But the question that writer Wessie du Toit appears to be asking in their article for The Critic magazine is preserved for who?

The author draws a negative comparison between how Battersea has been repurposed and how Bankside power station has been changed into the very popular Tate Modern gallery. I can well see the writers point here. Battersea Power Station has been restored for the elites of this world whereas Bankside was repurposed into a gallery for all.

Wessie du Toit said of the Battersea Power Station development:

The point of heritage is that people living in a particular place derive their shared identity, in part, from a connection with the history of that place. What we have here is more like zombie heritage, where the past is kept alive in the sterile form of a branded product. It even feels misleading to say the building has been repurposed. Really it has been resurrected as a kind of Madame Tussauds waxwork, to provide a themed backdrop for property investment and shopping. 

This is most obvious in the architects’ obsessive attention to “authentic” details. Bricks were sourced from the original suppliers, who made them using traditional methods of hand-moulding and wire-cutting. In the former control rooms, retro panels of dials, buttons and levers have been meticulously restored as decoration for a cocktail bar and a private events space. Someone has even contrived a puff of smoke rising from one of the chimneys. The power station has become its own death mask. 

The author is correct in my view. Bankside was repurposed for the many whilst Battersea was repurposed for the few.