A pair of medium-sized apartment blocks have been rising for the past few months just south of Battersea Power Station. Now they've reached the point where they're ruining the view of what had been the best-loved local landmark for thousands of SW11/4/8 residents.
These two new blocks - one of which is still swathed in scaffolding - already appear to be just as dull as most of the other stuff that has risen out of the mud of Nine Elms since 2011. All that most of us will be able to see of the renovated power station are the chimney-tops - and these of course are not the originals! (But - it doesn't do to carp - they'e made a damn fine job of replicating them).
Oddly, very little mention is made of these two new blocks in the flashy online brochure for the Battersea - Nine Elms development.
Those sweeping great aerial views of the whole zone, with their computer-generated impressions of all the new towers, simply don't show anything that far from of the river.
You have to look at their interactive map to find out that this is the so-called Battersea Power Station Development Zone 4a - otherwise known as the Battersea Exchange site. It's separated from the rest of the development by Battersea Park Road, and seems to be the main location for the much reduced number of so-called affordable homes, plus a primary school and a health centre.
It's hardly mentioned on the main glossy marketing sites. But if you look closely at the photo above you can see they've put a great big ad on the side of the bigger block - batterseaexchange.com
.
Go to this site and you find it's part of the TaylorWimpey firm. You'll also see an impression of the finished buildings - looks like the bigger tower will also be white with those deep fins you can see on the smaller one, making them look a bit like electrical transformers. This might be relevant as there is also a major electricity substation being rebuilt on this site....but probably isn't. Some remarkably similar blocks are going up right now along York Road opposite Waterloo Station as part of the old Shell building redevelopment.
These two blocks in themselves are no worse than any of the rest of the development, and less ghastly than some of them. Looking at the brochure, it looks like these towers will not actually be the "affordable" flats (prices seem to be in the £550k - £1m region) - so they must be in the smaller brown blocks fronting the road?
What is sad is that the mile or more of these stubby towers, strung out along both sides of Nine Elms Lane, simply do not work together; they don't coalesce, they don't complement, they don't form anything like an interesting cluster. Even Canary Wharf is beginning to get that 'Manhattan' effect where the sum of the parts is much better than most of the individual buildings.
Around here, the reverse seems to be true. Perhaps it will be better when the massive new towers at the Vauxhall end go up. I'm personally hoping they will block out my view of the most-hated tower of the lot - that killer cylinder, I think they call it St Georges Tower - the one that downed a helicopter a few years back.
Longer term of course, all this stuff will return whence it came. Like so many worm-casts thrown up on a mudbank, it will all sink back into mire. Maybe sooner than we all expect.
