Aesthetic Politics and Heritage Nostalgia: Electrical Generating Superstations in the London Cityscape since 1927

Since they were first proposed in the 1920s and 1940s, there has been a significant relationship between central London’s gigantic power stations, Battersea and Bankside, and those concerned with safeguarding the capital’s ‘public face’ and its artistic and architectural treasures. Both plants were designed with technical compromises enforced on them by urban heritage preservation critics, and both were erected with the aesthetic considerations of London’s cityscape firmly in mind. Moreover, it was expected that good design — of the buildings themselves, and of the technology developed to mitigate their pollution — would minimize their negative aesthetic and environmental impact on the city. Later in the century, that good design would be upheld as something to itself preserve. Yet concerns about aesthetics, the possibilities of technological innovation and the importance of building conservation within the cityscape produced a number of ironies particular to these London landmarks that have wider implications for understanding the cultural politics of urban heritage preservation and urban renewal projects.