h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Battersea Power Station is a fabulous art deco style building in the centre of London. It resembles a huge snooker table turned on it's back, the legs being the four huge original steam towers. It has to be said, that whilst being one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, it has to be one of the most unusually ugly attractive buildings. It's charm lies in it's size and in the way that it is totally unrepentantly a functional monster.

Battersea Power Station supplied power to London between 1937 and 1980. It was designed by the British architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Battersea Power Station was shown on the cover of the Pink Floyd 'Animals' album. The cover showed a huge inflatable pink pig floating way above the power station.

The Power Station can best be seen from the other side of the river Thames, looking across from the Embankment.

Find out more and see a nice picture here!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1066000/1066758.stm

It's a real shame that most of it is just a derelict shell following the aborted plan to turn it into a theme park in the late 1980's.
Although I belive that the original control room is still preserved intact (it was listed for it's interior)

It was always a very impressive sight when working in the yard next to it, even more so when it was still in use with great clouds of steam coming from the chimneys.


Mention of the Pink Floyd's Animals album can't be allowed to pass without reminding everyone that the Pig balloon broke free of it's moorings and caused the normal flight approach route to Heathrow airport to be closed

I didn't know that about the pig!

I was walking past there at about three in the morning, in October last year, and the whole thing was lit up in different colours. Every few minutes the whole front changed from a range of blue lights, to purple, to greens and so on. The bit between the posts had a white flickering electrical effect. Does anyone know what was happening? I've never seen it lit up in colours again.

I remember it as well (so weren't seeing things )

I think it was to do with the Battersea arts festival but I'm not sure.

Incidentally, the guy who designed the Battersea Power Station also designed the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, one of the city's finest buildings, and the largest church in the country.

Hmmm, I must say in a list of the world's most beautiful buildings this wouldn't be on mine.
I must be missing something.
Still, takes all sorts