I don't say the area should not be studied and restored. I say the current project is wrong! The Power Station doesn't want to become a Shopping Station! Why not making a museum of electricity instead? And please, don't touch the landscape around! The Power Station is beautiful because it seems a mountain in the middle of the town of London! What happens if your start building your very unoriginal and useless fountains in front of it? Look at my pictures! Look at them! This is the beauty of the Power Station! There will be nothing to watch from Grosvenor Road no more! What do people have to see? Your fountains? People going out from the buildings, with fuchsia or electric green shopbags and their screaming children? Does London need another Gap, another Benetton, or another damned Starbucks Coffee? May I suggest an example from Rome, Italy?
http://www.centralemontemartini.org (best viewed with Internet Explorer)
My friends called me "Francesca, hurry up, do something! The local Council wants to saw the chimneys!". So, here's "The Scarecrow" - a fast demo I have just recorded. I know you're going to rebuild the chimneys, but which modifications will be done and why? Do these modifications have something to do with your project specifically or are the chimneys simply tumbledown? I come from the eternal Rome, so I have a certain tolerance and custom in front of destruction and reconstruction of monuments, but can the population there be sure your Partners will rebuild the chimneys exactly as they are now? Or will the natives of SW11, SW8 or SW4 find the beloved chimneys and the roof full of lights like a Christmas Tree? I saw one of your pictures on your site http://www.thepowerstation.co.uk which does not convince me. I appreciated the modern architectures in London a lot, because they were placed where they didn't kill the landscape. 30 St. Mary Axe is very beautiful and it enriched a little church not far away from it, the new buildings near London Bridge are decent, Canary Wharf and around is very original, London Eye was a good choice after all and it bettered the sight since the Big Ben is quite ugly.
May I say something about your planned pedestrian bridge? It seems one of those things I use to attach my dresses in my wardrobe. Chelsea Bridge is enough. I would spend some money for the underground instead... but this is a problem for all South London and it's not your Council's business, I suppose, or/and I would study better a pedestrian path beside the river. What about your hotels? How tall are they? How is the view of them from the other side of the Thames and from the South West? "A building of heroic proportions"... please, Battersea doesn't need your heroism, but your brains to develop another project. I'll tell you what's going to happen. The natives of the South West will not get angry, because they are already angry... they can only get angrier. Sandy won't go jogging on the Thames anymore. Johnny Drunkie will vomit in the Thames because he will be disturbed by your feasts...he will even try to get into one of them and he will be thrown out by one of your dress-selectors all dressed in black on the door of some disco. If I wanted to organize a romantic evening with some local english guy I will not have the opportunity to make it anymore. But this is nothing and I repeat NOTHING! Do you really want to face a horde of enraged Pink Floyd fans? They will load their catapults with flying pigs! And they will bomb your glass pavilion! Think twice before you make a wrong step.
I know words and music never did much to save the world... actually they only made singers become heroes, anyway it may happen that you fall in love with a song on the background... remember, there's always a Scarecrow living within the Power Station. Don't forget. It's all. |
