Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed

The rude fingers of Battersea are repointed, and barely rude at all. The power station by Giles Gilbert Scott and J. Theo Halliday is no longer a wasteland to contemplate as you sit on the Waterloo to Shepperton night train. It has become a small town with shopping centre, restaurants and a pier on the river, so a middle-aged woman can get on an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers and pretend to be Cardinal Wolsey without others knowing it.

‘Talk about trendy – the food here is served on bits of wood.’

I have only ever known it as a ruin and so approaching it from its Underground stop feels subversive, but then all subversion ends. It is glossy, tinny: a dinosaur skeleton painted in glitter with glass apartments stacked on the head and satellite glass apartments all around for fellowship. I suppose it was inevitable: the greatest redevelopment opportunity in central-ish London in a generation and they have, typically, replicated Chelsea Harbour and added another Westfield, since two weren’t bad enough.