Inside, WilkinsonEyre’s work is a balance of exposure and intervention. In their forthcoming book chronicling work on the project, they describe the importance of maintaining the station’s “scale and visual drama”—an approach they saw as akin to working with “a modern ruin”. Their shared intention with the project client, the Battersea Power Station Development Company, was to retain legibility of all original fabric—to intervene with lightweight form, and to embark on a detailed restoration exercise that reinstated original equipment as urban sculpture. They began with a deep evaluation phase, including a 3D cloud survey of the building and ‘journalistic catalogue’ that formed the basis of their technical and material strategy.
As a result, the station’s native interiors are fully legible—their scale and heft readable against the finely inserted layers of circulation. So calculable are the proportions of the space, that when inside it is easy to imagine the churning sound and heat of the coal-fired engines that once inhabited the hall. Instead, it is now occupied by a programme of retail, event space, and multiplex cinema, with office and residential spaces existing out of sight, beyond the public heart of the building.