Temples of Power: Designing Bankside and Battersea Power Stations

Though their outward appearances have been preserved, Giles Gilbert Scott's temples to industry have undergone a fascintating evolution in the 21st century. Bankside Power Station is now known as the Tate Modern museum, which is considered a testament to modern adaptive reuse, while Battersea Power Station is undergoing commercial redevelopment in collaboration with Frank Gehry and Foster + Partners. Despite their differing histories, the two power stations remain today – as they did when they were originally built – as symbols of the industrial era of London. Examining the design intentions and evolutions of Bankside and Battersea, in conjunction with an analysis of the architectural concept of monumentality, allows the development a working definition of what it means to be a monument in the 21^st century, and how the fluidity of monumentality creates a dynamic relationship between the structures and the city of London itself.