Power dressing
20.06.08
By James Whitmore
Will the latest plan for Battersea Power Station, REO’s £4bn, Vinoly-designed ‘Eco-Dome’ become a reality?
Another year, another proposal for the redevelopment of the derelict Shell that is Battersea Power Station and the 32 acres surrounding it.
Yet, 25 years after one of the world’s biggest brick buildings closed, the latest plan by new owner Real Estate Opportunities, revealed today in Property Week, is the most ambitious, the most breathtaking and the most likely proposal so far to see the light of day. For the first time, the owner acknowledges that the relatively inaccessible site needs a Tube station to make it viable.
The highlight of the scheme is an area of five office blocks covered, like Cornwall’s Eden Project, in a plastic dome with a 300 metre-high glass ‘chimney’ that is open to the elements – and which has already been dubbed ‘the Spark Plug’.
Setting out its goals as ‘deliverability’ and ‘sustainability’, which is a lot more that can be said for the many ill-fated proposals from previous site owners, first John Broome and then Victor Hwang, REO aims to develop 8m sq ft of flats, offices, shops, hotels and leisure facilities. The estimated cost is a dizzying £4bn.
A community consultation, for which a suite has been created on the site, will begin on Monday 7 July and a planning application is due to be lodged at the end of this year or beginning of next.
Unknown quantity
REO is not a household name in the UK. It is 67% owned by Irish developer and investor Treasury Holdings, which employs more than 500 people, is the largest western investor in China – through AIM-listed company China Real Estate Opportunities – and prides itself on its Green development credentials.
Treasury has a dedicated environmental division, which employs around 30 people, and is developing the 50m sq ft Dongtan, the world’s first ‘eco-city’, near Shanghai.
The Battersea masterplan has been designed by Uruguyan architect Rafael Vinoly. He envisages 3m sq ft of flats in the power station, around the glass chimney and in separate blocks to the north of the site near the River Thames, 2.5m sq ft of offices, 1m sq ft of hotels and serviced flats, 900,000 sq ft of Covent Garden-style retailing in the power station and 500,000 sq ft of leisure and cultural space.
To offset the square bulk of the power station, the buildings around it are fluid, curvy and stepped. The power station appears to rise above manmade lakes in a ‘halo’ that Vinoly has designed to surround it. The public spaces, including a riverside walk, and residential blocks will be to the north by the Thames and the domed offices to the south.
Watching Vinoly discussing his plans on the marketing video, while standing on one of the few dry bits of land within the derelict power station, is to realise the enormity of REO’s task.
Rob Tincknell, the managing director of Treasury Holdings UK, which is the external manager of listed company REO, says Battersea ‘is the biggest regeneration opportunity in London left today’ but acknowledges that there are enormous site constraints. These include railway lines, gas holders, the Thames Water Ring Main – which runs under the site – views that have to be protected and public access.
But by far the biggest constraint is the crumbling power station, which stands right in the middle of the site and requires at least £100m spent on it simply to return it to a workable state. Once that has happened, Vinoly’s design envisages flats on the top level, a designer hotel below and shops, cafes and restaurants at ground level in the two turbine halls. An energy museum would also be created to showcase the renewable energy aims of REO.
Sustainability is the key theme for REO. ‘It will be the UK’s first zero-carbon scheme,’ says Tincknell. This is a neat twist – after it opened in 1957 the power station pumped out 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 14 tonnes of sulphur dioxide every hour, giving it, without doubt, the largest carbon footprint in London.
This will be achieved by REO producing its own renewable energy for the site in the power station and creating office buildings that will be the first in any UK city to be naturally ventilated.
The buildings will be under an ‘Eco-Dome’ covered in ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, known by its abbreviation, ETFE. It is the polymer that has been used at the Eden Project in Cornwall, Terminal 5 at Heathrow and the Allianz Arena in Munich, home to Bayern Munich football club. Air will enter the dome and the offices via vents at ground level and exit through the 300 metre-high, 32 metre-wide chimney. The roofs of the office blocks, which will be in a hot pocket of air at the top of the dome, will be turned into tropical gardens.
Tincknell says the offices will produce only a third of the energy of a typical UK office building – 113KWhr/sq m/year – and will be attractive to the increasing number of occupiers with a corporate social responsibility agenda.
Route and branch
While it may tick all the sustainability boxes, the scheme is not viable unless a new Tube station is built, as 4,000 residents and up to 25,000 employees – not to mention daily visitors – could not be catered for by the existing network of buses and mainline trains.
As Tincknell admits: ‘If we don’t have significant improvement in public transport, then we will have to rethink our plans.’
REO has come up with three route options for an extension of the Northern Line in a spur from Kennington. Its favoured route would cost an estimated £347m and would have two stops, Wandsworth Town and Battersea. It would be entirely paid for by REO and other local landowners, working within the Nine Elms Opportunity Area .
Tincknell believes that this large contribution by REO in addition to the heritage and cultural attractions it will provide should count in reducing the amount of affordable housing it should provide. If not, the scheme becomes financially unviable and another Battersea Power Station proposal will bite the dust.