THE BATTERSEA POWER STATION, London. An Art Deco masterpiece which will disappear

Newspapers report that a long and sad story is coming to its end: the old coal power station of Battersea, London, after almost 30 years of attempts to plan its re-use, will be demolished to make room to a big luxury flat compound.
All of Art Deco architecture lovers and all of rock music ones know what it means: we'll lose forever the greatest industrial building in that style in Europe and we'll lose forever the subject of the Pink Floyd's "Animals" record cover.


Here below a short chronology of the Station's history, for further infos about Battersea Power Station look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station
http://www.batterseapowerstation.org.uk/index.html


1929: Starts the building of Battersea Power Station in London.Last exterior's design is by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who designed also the other power station at bankside (more lucky, since it has been restored and now hosts the Tate Modern gallery). First projects and interiors' decor were made by a team of famous architects, including T.P. O'Sullivan.Building and interiors' decoration style is a masterpiece of Art Deco style: bricks, italian marbles, low-reliefs artpieces, decorated control panels make of the station a great example of the 1930s look and taste.

1935: Battersea starts producing energy (234 MW)

1955: Battersea B (509 MW) is built

1977: Pink Floyd put on their LP "Animals" cover an image of Battersea, with a flying pig between the chimneys.

1983: Pollution and obsolescence make the station being closed.Begins a quest for re-using area and buildings but costs look huge and plans not profitable.

2012: Announcement that the building will be demolished. The largest brick building in Europe will die.

Since i think that Second Life can be even an easy opportunity to preserve our memories in a very impressive way, and since a lot of my work is dedicated to Art Deco, i thought to make a model of that building, in the hope to find a place where it can be shown to public. The model is an homage to that great monument of past industry, design and culture.





I put also for sale a smaller (but resizable) copy of the model in my Melu Deco main store at Old Hollywood.