Bankside Power Station

Bankside Power Station is located on the south bank of the Thames in the Bankside district of London. Since 2000 it has been used to house the Tate Modern art museum.

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the building is brick-clad steel, 200 m long, with a substantial central chimney of 99 m. The height was limited to less than that of St Paul's Cathedral on the opposite side of the river.

The station was commissioned following a power shortage in 1947 and Scott's design was completed and accepted within a year, despite strong local opposition.

Construction work was in two phases and was not completed until 1963. The western portion of the building was completed first and started generating power in 1952. The final structure roughly divided the building into three - the huge main turbine hall in the centre, with the smaller boiler room to one side and the switching room to the other. The oil-fired station had four generators. Rising oil prices made the station uneconomic, resulting in its closure in 1981.

For many years Bankside Power station was at great risk of being demolished by developers. Many people campaigned for the building to be saved and put forward suggestions for possible new uses. An application to list the building was refused.

In the spring of 1993 the building's fate looked doomed, contractors had already knocked a large hole in the side of the building and started removing much of the redundant plant. The BBC television programme 'One Foot in the Past' focused on the impending threat to the building. The reporter, Dan Cruickshank, made an impassioned plea for the building to be saved.

Tate Modern

In April 1994, the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. In July of the same year an international competition was launched to select an architect for the new gallery. In January 1995 Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the winning architects.

The £134 million conversion to the Tate Modern started in June 1995 with the removal of the remaining redundant plant. The conversion was completed in January 2000. The most obvious external change is the blocky two-story glass extension on one half of the roof. Much of the internal structure remains, including the cavernous main turbine hall, which retains the overhead travelling crane. A substation taking up the southern third of the building remained on-site, and owned by the French power company EDF Energy. In 2006, EDF announced that they would be releasing half this holding to the museum.

Scott's other London power station is at Battersea and is widely considered a more iconic design, with its four towers. Battersea Power Station was proposed for the Tate Modern but, due to financial constraints and less dilapidation, the smaller Bankside building was chosen.

Television

Many episodes of British television, particularly science fiction series that have required industrial backdrops, such as Red Dwarf, were filmed at the station. It also served as Tower of London in the 1995 film version of Richard III.

ee also

*Energy use and conservation in the United Kingdom
*Energy policy of the United Kingdom