The London
Revolution blog [visit
link] tells
us:
"Bankside Power Station was built
by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott - his name may not be familiar, but his other major
London building will be - Battersea Power Station. He also designed the
much-loved Red Telephone boxes, the Salvation Army’s William Booth Memorial
Training College in Camberwell, and Waterloo Bridge.
Bankside had the reputation as a
debauched and squalid area, packed with brothels, bear-baiting pits and (horror
of horrors) theatres! Bankside had suffered much from bomb damage during the
war, and plans were afoot to regenerate the entire area. Many people felt that a
building a large power station at Bankside was hardly in keeping with this
regeneration and there was huge local opposition to the building of the power
station, with questions raised about ‘noise and sulphur or other noxious fumes’.
The proposed Bankside Power Station was considered architecturally incongruous
with St Paul’s Cathedral (which is directly opposite), threatening the views to
and from the cathedral. Lord Llewellin said in Parliament that “However good the
architect, however well designed it may be, it will be rather like introducing
an alligator into the water-lily pond in one’s garden.”
Another peer, Viscount Samuel
imagined tourists on a Thames boat trip a century down the line demanding to
know how such a thing could be built, asking why the people of London tolerated
such a thing without rising up against it.
In the end, the government
overruled those against it (namely the City of London and St. Paul’s, apparently
alongside 822 other cultural bodies in the country) and went ahead with the
construction of Giles Gilbert Scott’s edifice in the name of private enterprise.
The power station was built in two stages, between 1947 and 1963, in deco style.
The central chimney is 99 metres tall - designed to be lower than St Paul’s 114
metre dome opposite.
Bankside Power Station started
generating electricity (from oil) in 1952, with the Eastern half of the station
starting to generate in 1963. The power station didn’t remain useful for long -
and was closed in 1981 after just 29 years of electricity generation. The hike
in oil prices in the 70’s meant that other forms of electricity production
became more cost-effective, rendering Bankside an expensive white
elephant.
For 13 years, Bankside Power
Station remained empty, until the Tate Modern acquired the site in 1994. Various
international architects competed for the contract to redesign the site, with
Herzog & de Meuron the eventual winners. Their design was the only one which
retained the existing power station shell substantially intact, with the two
storey glass roof being added to allow light in to the gallery. The building of
the Tate was funded by the Millennium Commission (monies from the National
Lottery fund - £50m), further funding was provided by the Arts Council, English
Partnerships, the London Borough of Southwark and donations from corporations
and private individuals to a total of £134m.
The Tate Modern has been a great
success fom the day it opened - two million people visited in the first three
months alone. The gallery complements St Paul’s Cathedral, and tourists can walk
across to the Cathedral from the Millennium Bridge directly outside the Tate
Modern. With Tate Modern, the new Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, shops and offices
(and not a bear pit in sight) Bankside’s regeneration could finally be
considered complete. And we can only guess at whether Lord Llewellin would still
think of it as an alligator in his lily pond."
The Tate's website
[visit
link] tells us:
"In December 1992 the Tate Trustees
announced their intention to create a separate gallery for international modern
and contemporary art in London.
The former Bankside Power Station
was selected as the new gallery site in 1994. The following year, Swiss
architects Herzog & De Meuron were appointed to convert the building into a
gallery. That their proposal retained much of the original character of the
building was a key factor in this decision.
The iconic power station, built in
two phases between 1947 and 1963, was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. It
consisted of a stunning turbine hall, 35 metres high and 152 metres long, with
the boiler house alongside it and a single central chimney. However, apart from
a remaining operational London Electricity sub-station the site had been
redundant since 1981.
In 1996 the design plans were
unveiled and, following a £12 million grant from the English Partnerships
regeneration agency, the site was purchased and work began. The huge machinery
was removed and the building was stripped back to its original steel structure
and brickwork. The turbine hall became a dramatic entrance and display area and
the boiler house became the galleries.
Since it opened in May 2000, more
than 40 million people have visited Tate Modern. It is one of the UK’s top three
tourist attractions and generates an estimated £100 million in economic benefits
to London annually.
In 2009 Tate embarked on a major
project to develop Tate Modern. Working again with Herzog & de Meuron, the
transformed Tate Modern will make use of the power station’s spectacular
redundant oil tanks, increase gallery space and provide much improved visitor
facilities."