From left The original brick facade of the Battersea Power Station has been lovingly recreated. However, the project does suffer from some ‘soulless’ spaces, despite some of the steampunk charm located within the larger site


BRIEF ENCOUNTERS


After 35 years of decline and failed development, and almost ten years of restoration, finally Battersea Power Station has reopened. How does this remarkable industrial building look and feel up close and repurposed? Veronica Simpson reports


A GREAT VIOLENCE is done to both a place and its people when the landmarks, icons and artefacts that they know and love and which have defined them and their culture for a century or more are obliterated by war. Tis is the case so eloquently laid out by Robert Bevan in his 2006 book, Te Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. Te narrative was then enriched by filmmaker Tim Slade in his equally riveting documentary of the same


name from 2016, detailing how the strategic bombing by invading forces of temples, churches, libraries, museums, places of civic congregation and enrichment, was eventually successfully listed – and prosecuted – as a war crime.


‘Every building sends a message,’ said Slade, in an interview at the film’s launch. ‘Tis is the most important truth that I learned in making the documentary.’


If this is true, what does this mean for cities or neighbourhoods that have been massively re-landscaped and redeveloped over the last 20 years – not in the name of war, but of speculative development? Where the residents of these areas are not the intended beneficiaries, and where the development involves displacement and even large scale disfigurement, that is also an act of violence, according to academic and writer Leslie Kern,


JOHN STURROCK


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