The Sad Story Of The Power Station

First things first… that blue sky over London does exist. Even though we still believe that the British isle is way too far north to be called a permanently inhabitable place, we do have to admit there were definitely more sunny days in London than what people would give it credit. There are, however, other reasons why we have doubts regarding the city and whether or not it’s a good place to live…

But let’s start the other way around. We have a thing about construction sites. Ever since we were kids we love to explore them. Yes, that’s not really the place for kids. They are dangerous. But fun. Construction sites are full of cool stuff. Like excavators or cranes. Cranes are particularly interesting because they are tall and they are reaching for the skies.

Scaffoldings are intriguing, too. Because they temporarily add some mystery to a building.

Well, we’re not kids any longer (at least not in the strict sense of the definition) but we are still drawn to construction sites. Which makes London a very cool place. We don’t know if it’s true, but it seems as if London is de facto the biggest construction site in Europe. London is literally a forest of cranes and everywhere you look new buildings are popping up. And as most of these buildings are going to be tall and made with lots of glass… you can guess it, can you? Reflections plus cranes equals photography heaven.

So that’s the good side. Unfortunately,  there’s more to these construction sites than meets the eye. Look closer to what they’re building. Shiny tall office buildings, corporate headquarters and lots and lots of non-affordable super high end apartment buildings that most of the people simply can’t afford. So they’ll either end up bought as the 5th home of foreign billionaires, for the unborn kids of such billionaires in case they’ll ever decide to study in London or simply to kept empty. In other words, they’re build by investors who don’t c`are that they’re driving the people out of the city that give the city its soul.

Apart from providing plenty of photo opportunity, the Battersea Power Station to us just became a symbol of everything that’s wrong about London. It is true that it had been neglected for a long time and was probably at risk of one day simply crumbling away. So of course we appreciated the fact that somebody decided to take care of it, all the way to refurbishing those 4 iconic white chimneys rising above those enormous red brick walls. Sadly though, these people were also given permission to completely encircle the iconic landmark in fancy glass apartment buildings… you get the idea. Another place that lost its soul….