Battersea Power Station Community Group refute owners claims of local support
In a press release issued today the Battersea Power Station Community Group challenge the Power Station owners, REO/Treasury Holdings, claims of local support following consultation.
Be sure to register your views to Wandsworth Council before the February 1st deadline.
press release:
Re: Consultation
REO/ Treasury are claiming that 82% of people who responded to their latest consultation approve of the plans unveiled at the public exhibition on 3 days in December 3rd to 5th 2009
We feel that there should be better statistics behind this bald statement. The survey was self selecting through a simple questionnaire which literally asked to agree disagree or be unsure. There is no attempt to put the result in context of numbers of people responding.
On the 2 occasions we were at the exhibition there were few people attending. No notices to guide people to the exhibition and, apparently, inexperienced staff explaining the content of the models.
We fail to understand the purpose of this other than as PR during the period leading to the planning application when comments should be received at Wandsworth Council by February 1st 2010.
There is nothing on the exhibition to say that controversial plans to demolish the Grade II listed Water Pumping Station are applied for and that the demolition of the chimneys and rebuilding are proposed. I do know that the online petition on the subject of demolition of the iconic chimneys received over 600 votes to repair the chimney without demolition (PM web petition)
The questionnaire also asks the simple question to agree, disagree or not know if a tube line and station is supported.
Again, we know that the Minister for Transport Sadiq Kahn called the idea “humbug” and that there are no plans for the Government to financially support the tube line and that the Mayor of London has his own problems with a £5 billion deficit in the GLA transport budget so no money from there either.
See also YouTube “Battersea Power Station new plans” for the view of the exhibition and model
Contact Brian Barnes Chairman of Battersea Power Station Community Group
0207 627 5821
If you would like to object to these plans you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.
For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.
To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station
Do you have any ideas for Battersea Power Station?
Do you have ideas for how Battersea power station could be used NOW or in the FUTURE?
REO, the current owners of Battersea Power Station, make vague promises about community use and access to the site but all their plans are projected way into the future. REO’s schedule is “planning” until 2012 and building only set to finish in 2020- nearly 40 years after the power station was decommissioned.
Do you have any ideas for immediate use?
How about something for the kids like a giant adventure playground?
A river bus hub for river buses that acccept oyster cards?
The building is so huge, many times the size of its little and uglier sister the Tate Modern, it can probably accommodate all your ideas.
REO insist on only considering grandiose money making schemes on the site. They clearly plan to do nothing until 2012 and then only if they get their tube extension. This “all or nothing” approach flies in the face of current economic realities and other successful models of re-using industrial buildings based on either gradual and organic development or imaginative re-use of the spaces.
Do you have any ideas for how to use such a big building?
A museum of power technology; steam, water, wind, coal?
A Museum of the Thames? It could contain many boats, it has a river front. It has a great views from the chimneys.
An extension of the Science or Natural History Museums for all their bigger exhibits?
A Museum of Flight. Battersea has connections with aviation e.g.1900s Battersea Balloon Works.
Most of REO’s plans are for building around the site.Their ideas for the power station are banal, a conference centre (yawn), hotel and shopping (novel) and, would you believe, flats. If there was ever a building inappropriate for residential use it is Battersea Power Station. Their plans necessitate vandalising the magnificent brick facades by punching through windows in order to maximise income generating floor space. Light wells would be the more appropriate, architecturally sensitive but less profitable option.
Do you have any ideas that do not mean destroying the architectural value of the building?
REO make much of the “green spaces” ( the little bits between what they plan to build around the power station) but are less keen to make clear most are private spaces. Do you have ideas for the site that do not require surrounding and obscuring the Power Station with dense ugly office buildings?
Do you have any ideas how to use the current open spaces around the power station?
Doing nothing until 2020 demonstrates a bankruptcy of ideas by REO. If REO cannot think of, or at least allow, any uses that benefit Londoners and the local community then they are unsuitable custodians of a national treasure and should hand over the site to public ownership.
Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project
Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far
Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe
If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.
Click here to view more Battersea Power Station links
Battersea Power Station = Regenicide
Inside the BPS, 20 Oct 2009
A spiky piece sent to the Evening Standard by Conservation Architecture & Planning office Jack Warshaw caught our eye recently. In the piece he denounces the redevelopment plans in Nine Elms and lambastes proposals for the new US Embassy.
“The projected new embassy’s security requirements…assume a “worst case” scenario of armed terrorist attack. The resulting stockade mentality… will contribute nothing towards making the area a more accessible, human-scaled place. Americans like me will be embarrassed by it. Londoners will shake their fists at it.”
“The Power Station was doomed when Wandsworth Council failed to safeguard it from the collapse of John Broome’s scheme and English Heritage washed its hands of it… Regeneration? Don’t make me laugh… Just more examples of “regenicide”- killing off a place in the name of regenerating it.”
Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project
Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far
Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe
If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.
Click here for more Battersea Power Station links
If you would like to object to these plans you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.
For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.
To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station
URBZ MASHUP workshops hit 6 cities
Like the Urban Typhoon workshops in Tokyo (2006) and Mumbai (2008) , the URBZ MASHUP workshops, too will provide an opportunity to explore a city, connect with local residents, artists, architects, designers and musicians. This workshop aims at unleashing the global imagination and celebrating locality by producing photos, videos, interviews, drawings, renderings, writing (fiction & non-fiction), installations, performances in and about specific streets and places. The output of the workshops will be exhibited physically and virtually at the end of the workshop.
The URBZ MASHUP is a seven day event comprising 5 days of workshop and 2 days of seminar + exhibition. It will be held in the following cities:
Tokyo: July 1-5, 2009
Istanbul: August 2-9, 2009
Mumbai: Nov. 22-29, 2009
Rio: February 7-13, 2010
New York: April, 2010
Amsterdam: June, 2010
For information please visit www.urbz.net/mashup
Please visit our Links page for information on Urbanism
Neighbourly Encounter Video
Neighbourly Encounter: Missing Sculpture
Visit Silwood Video Group to view archive of local historian Tony McTurk and Artist’s model David Grist visit to the Silwood Estate in 2002 to find the missing sculpture Neighbourly Encounter by artist Uli Nimptsch.
Interview with Johnnie Walker online now
An interview is now online with Johnnie Walker from the Hackney and Leyton Sunday league about the effects of the Olympics on Hackney Marshes football. To view this interview and other clips from our Olympics project please visit the Spectacle website.
Iain Sinclair banned from Hackney libraries because of Olympic criticism
Iain Sinclair, novelist and long standing Hackney resident has been banned from reading extracts of his new book in Hackney libraries because of his criticisms of the 2012 olympics. In an interview that was published in the Guardian, Sinclair describes the measures taken by Hackney council to stifle debate on the Olympic issue.
“I was asked to go along to Stoke Newington library to speak to 20 people: old hippies and local history buffs, probably. But I’d written an anti-Olympics piece in the London Review of Books, and so the Hackney thought police decided: no, we can’t have this person in our library. They lied about this all the way down the line, insisting it was nothing to do with the Olympics but that they can’t have ‘controversial’ topics discussed in libraries. Eventually someone from the Hackney Citizen used the Freedom of Information Act to get the transcript [of what was said in a meeting] and, sure enough, it came directly from the Mayor, Jules Pipe, saying that this person is anti-Olympics, and he doesn’t go into our libraries. So Hackney Council is my co-sponsor, really – and, of course, this manipulation [on the part of the council] is also a big theme of the book.”
For more information on Spectacles Olympic Project please visit our Project Page
For Spectacles latest film on the Olympics please visit our archive page.
Olympics ‘not worth it’ say Hackney footballers
Spectacle went to Hackney Marshes to interview local footballers on what they thought of plans to turn their pitches into a coach car park for the Olympic stadium.
The East marsh, has a reputation all over the world for being home to the largest number of outdoor pitches in Europe. It is not just this reputation that will be lost if Olympic plans go ahead says locals. The deep community spirit the football games bring to Hackney will also disapear.
As one female footballer pointed out, they could play in Walthamstow but why should Hackney women’s team play in Walthamstow ‘its not right’. Many were highly sceptical that once the Olympic games were finished their precious pitches would be returned to them.
The East marsh football games have been taking place for over 50 years. They have been kept going through rain or snow by the local community and easy availability of space. Anyone who wants to can play. For many who take part, losing all this for a the Olympics, which will only last 3 weeks, is just not worth it.
For more information on Spectacles Olympic Project please visit our Project Page
For Spectacles latest film on the Olympics please visit our archive page.
London Olympic “park” displaces allotments
You can view video clips about the displacement and destruction of the 100 year old Manor Gardens Allotments to make way for a walk way for 4 weeks of the London 2012 Olympics.
These clips are part of our on going project about the effects of the Olympic mega project on the fabric of London and its citizens.
For more information on Spectacles Olympic Project please visit our Project Page
For Spectacles latest film on the Olympics please visit our archive page.
