3. The Tate Modern Project

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Both Bankside and Battersea have, and continue to undergo renovation and refurbishment, their original programs as power stations discarded and replaced by public and commercial ventures. In the case of Bankside Power Station, after its decommission on October 31 1981, the building sat unused on the South Bank for several years.[1]  As building decayed, no measures were put into place for its preservation. The reason for this was simple: the site had been privatized after decommission, and had subsequently been given to Nuclear Electric to exploit. [2] A fierce debate began on whether to preserve or demolish the aging power station, and on the side of preservation, historian and Giles Scott expert Gavin Stamp wrote newspaper editorials pleading for the structure’s preservation and produced a film documentary on the power station called One Foot in the Past, that aired on BBC in 1993.[3] Later that year, Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery at the British National Art Museum, announced the museum’s decision to renovate Bankside Power Station and develop it into a new museum of modern art.[4] The choice to redevelop the power station instead of building a new structure was an important one, especially due to the power station’s sensitive location across from one of London’s most important religious and cultural monuments, St. Paul’s Cathedral.

After a design competition, the architecture firm Herzog + de Meuron was selected to redevelop Bankside into the Tate Modern museum. In their final design, the architects were able to borrow from “the power station’s former turbine hall…which could never be achievable in a brand new building,”[5], which in turn allows them to avert the “greatest danger of the all-encompassing art institution…being a cultural shopping mall”.[6] This “refusal to impose an overwhelming architectural gesture on the site” endows a particular kind of significance to the Tate and its relationship to Southwark and London. [7] 

 

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 Bankside Power Station initially represented Sir Giles Gilbert Scott attempt to celebrate and revere an industry that has arguably had as much influence on the country as religion. Its location across the Thames from the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral generates a commercial and tourist axis within the city center, enhanced by the 2000 construction of the Millennium Bridge, designed by Foster + Partners. This relationship demonstrates that London is one of the few cities in the world where it is possible for iconic religious and industrial monuments to face each other, each playing a part in a harmonious cityscape. It also reveals London’s interest in preserving its monumental architecture, while still utilizing the spaces for public use. Now converted into the Tate Modern Museum, the building transcends its original function while retaining its sublime quality, earning the moniker "the cathedral of cool."[9] 

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Bankside’s conversion into the Tate Modern has had a beneficial impact on the surrounding borough as well – according to a recent planning study, a “new cultural landscape” has been created in Southwark, “emerged from a local authority whose focus has been on the creation of a new spatial identity for an unknown place.”[10] This cultural landscape is characterized by the branded shops, new signs information areas, and redesigned streets and walkways that wind along the Thames, connecting tourists to the Tate, the National Theater, and the multitude of other venues that run along the South Bank. The development in the area has cohered the space into a commercial unit, that due to the successful branding and iconicity of the Tate and other attractions in the area, have transformed the area into what commentators have called “the Picadilly of the South Bank.” [11] The success of the Tate Modern, a “flagship development of global importance in its reinvention of the former power station as an international symbol of culture,” will have a lasting impact on Southwark and London, by opening a new commercial and tourist axis in the city center, and providing cultural capital to an underdeveloped region of the city. [12]


[1] Moore and Ryan, Building Tate Modern, 190.

[2] Ibid 190.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 9.

[6] Ibid, 12.

[7] Ibid.

[9] Belinda Beaton, "The Cathedral of Cool," Queen's Quarterly, (London: Summer 2006)

[10] Paul Teedon, "Designing A Place Called Bankside: On Defining An Unknown Space In London." (European Planning Studies 9, 2001)

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

3. The Tate Modern Project