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If you're familiar with the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 studio effort
Animals, you're familiar with London's Battersea Power Station, which appears
on the cover art with its famed chimneys. A Malaysian developer is working to
"transform
the building into a massive complex of retail space, offices, and luxury 'villas"
according to a CNN.com report.
While the plans for the site include demolition of the famed chimneys, one of the
architects behind the project tells CNN they will be rebuilt. "The chimneys are the
most powerful part of the icon. Take them away, and you don't have an icon. The coal
fumes has decayed the concrete, so they have to come down. But we're going to
painstakingly reconstruct them," Jim Eyre, director of Wilkinson Eyre, the architects
commissioned to develop the building explained to CNN.
The report even mentions that developers even plan to use
"precisely the same hue" to color the iconic chimneys sourced from the original
manufacturer. Eyre detailed the plan for the chimneys, "Two of them are still going
to be used as flues for the massive, modern energy center that we're going to
construct to power the place. The third will remain hollow with a glass roof, and the
fourth will house a cylindrical glass elevator that will pop out at the top at a
viewing platform."
Battersea Power Station went into operation in the '30s and in addition to its
appearance on the cover of Animals, it also appears in The Beatles' 1965 movie
Help and in the video for Judas Priest's 1982 hit "You've Got Another Thing
Comin'." The power station was decommissioned in 1983 and was sold to a consortium
led by Malaysia’s SP Setia for £400 million in July 2012. The first phase of the
redevelopment is expected to be completed in 2016.
[via CNN]
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[Published on: 9/3/14]
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