Brilliantly written by Will Self —about the Battersea Power Station. I truly enjoyed his writing style. His article reveals that journalism need not be a pompous and a jargon filled piece to captivate and engage audiences, even if being provocative.
Will Self really plays with the readers mind straight away —at least mine— connecting Battersea to historically infamous people so the readers perhaps associate it with a villainous history by reading Hitler's name. It slightly put me into a negative state of mind towards the power station. Which is indeed a correct proposition due to the fate that Mr. Tincknell has in store for it.
Will Self compares Battersea and London to the Roman Empire, Hitler and his 'Theorie vom Ruinwert'. The idea was pioneered by Albert Speer Hitler's architect, while planning for the 1936 Summer Olympics, although he should had mentioned that Speer was not its original inventor, even if the idea seems to come from him.
In reality it was a much older concept, even becoming a European-wide romantic fascination at one point.[1] Predecessors include a "new ruined castle" built by the Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel in the 18th century, and the designs for the Bank of England built in the 19th century produced by Sir John Soane.[1] When he presented the bank's governors with three oil sketches of the planned building one of them depicted it when it would be new, another when it would be weathered, and a third what its ruins would look like a thousand years onward.[1]
[1]Spotts, Frederic (2003). Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. New York: The Overlook Press. p. 322.
Self has a great way to tell readers Battersea is the capital's last 'fucking huge' ruin.
'ultimately, all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history was their monumental architecture … What then remained of the emperors of the Roman Empire? What would give evidence of them today, if not their buildings?’
Self made this article personal. He gives a gleam of his day-to-day life. He tells us he has been living close to the Power station and every day he sees the building in a different light. Through his adult life he had seen everything fundamental happening to the power station.
Is Battersea 'iconic' a temple to worship as so many people and Mr. Tincknell believe so? They are going to create a brand out if it for the rich to live in with their winter garden balconies and fake rebuilt chimneys.
Battersea is just a piece of economic hardware which is at the moment is a shell, a monument to the period industrial capitalism.
Will Self confesses that he belongs to the ‘progressive’ left despair of people, who regard the city’s genius as being the sum of its disparate, otiose, non-functioning and outright redundant parts.
He loves the so called retro living 'urbanist nostalgie de la bouse' and scrape the river mud off his boots with his iconic boot scraper that he picked up from an architectural salvage store.
Self wants to believe in Mr. Tincknell that this time he can pull it off —like so many others failed— to save the power station.
He sees the future, what this redevelopment could mean for his home, to the area of Battersea and the people who have lived there for decades. 'London, if Tincknell and his kind are anything to go by, will become a safer, cleaner and fundamentally duller city.'
On the other hand Will is so bothered about people who is strongly against Battersea Power Station being turned into shiny, happy flats for shiny rich people.
The class-cleansing of central London continues.
Battersea Power Station with its history of service to everyone indiscriminately, now it will only serve the rich and powerful few, perhaps a final undignified yet sarcastic and ironic fate to befall such a hideous monstrosity.
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