LARGEST -- brick building in Europe - Battersea Power Station (London, UK)
N 51° 28.947 W 000° 08.657
30U E 698280 N 5707344
The iconic Art-Deco Battersea Power Station, located at the River Thames riverside in western part of London, is the largest brick building in Europe...
Waymark Code: WMM6H9
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/30/2014
Views: 8
The iconic Art-Deco Battersea Power Station, located at the River Thames riverside in western part of London, is the largest brick building in Europe.
Battersea Power Station and its chimneys are famous thanks to numerous cultural appearances (e.g. scenes in the Beatles' film Help!, cover of the Pink Floyd's album Animals...) but the whole architectural complex belongs among the most valuable and most stunning examples of the industrial architecture. Battersea Power Station, the largest brick building in Europe, is work of renowned architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the man who also designed power station later rebuilt in Tate Modern and also the red telephone boxes, was hired by the London Power Company to create this first of a new generation of "superstations", with the building beginning to produce power for the capital in 1933. With dimensions of 160 × 170 m, the roof of the boiler house 50 m tall, and its four 103 m tall chimneys, it is a truly massive structure. The building in fact comprised two stations – Battersea "A" and Battersea "B", which were conjoined when the identical B section was completed in the 1950s, and it was the world’s most thermally efficient building when it opened. Power station was operational until 1983.
Now, after 30 years of delapidation, this jewel of the XXth century architecture is under process of rebuilding into new residential, cultural and commercial center of the West London.