6. Bankside and the "Cathedral of Cool"

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, in early 1992. 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.

The Tate’s location across the Thames from the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral can be viewed as a way London has adapted its city center for the 21^st century. In past cities, the axis of the city arranged itself around the religious monument; indeed, St. Paul’s Cathedral was the tallest, and arguably most important building in London for centuries after its completion in 1710. Today, St. Paul’s one of many buildings to make up London’s diverse skyline, and its spatial relationship with the Tate Modern has been utilized by the city of London in order to generate a commercial and tourist axis within the city center. The addition of the Millennium Bridge connects two of the most popular tourist destinations in London, establishing a new commercial route across the river and into Southwark from the City of London. Broadly, the relationship between the Tate and St. Paul’s Cathedral demonstrates that London’s adaptability for the 21^st century, and its ability to link iconic religious and industrial monuments for the purpose of redefining the axes of travel and commerce.

In the present day, Bankside’s rebirth as the Tate Modern gallery is a testament to Giles Gilbert Scott’s original design, due to the power station’s ability to transcend its initial program while still retaining a sense of grandeur, imbued by its sublime scale. After a design competition, the architecture firm Herzog + deMeuron 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,”[1], which in turn allows them to avert the “greatest danger of the all-encompassing art institution…being a cultural shopping mall”.[2] 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. 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."[4] Scott’s use of cathedral design techniques, modern materials, and the relationship between scale and the sublime, led to the development an architectural landmark that links London to its religious roots and past industrial history, while serving as a new, 21^stcentury model for the urban art gallery.