Battersea Power Station

Lonely Planet review

Familiar to an entire generation from Pink Floyd's 1977 Animals album cover, with the four smokestacks that somewhat resemble a table turned upside down, Battersea Power Station is a building both loved and reviled. Built by Giles Gilbert Scott with two chimneys in 1933 (the other two were added in 1955), it ceased operations in 1983 and since then there have been innumerable proposals to give it a new life.

In November 2006 it was sold to yet another group of developers; the previous ones, Parkview International, had owned it more than a dozen years from 1993 and had wanted to demolish the chimneys and turn the 'nave' of the structure into a 24-hour entertainment complex with restaurants, hotels, retail shops, cinemas etc. The power station's future seems as uncertain as ever as a new 'master plan' is redrawn, though one sensible proposal suggests that it house the government's new Energy Technologies Institute, established to research new technologies into combating climate change