PLONK! — The architecture of London's Infrastructure

PLONK! The architecture of London’s infrastructure

Luke O’Donovan

lukeodonovan.co.uk

PLONK! The architecture of London’s infrastructure

Luke O’Donovan

22

20

05

04 18

23

27 02

30

19 12

26

14 24

03 07

01

11 25

17 16

09 15 28

13

29

21

08

10 06

01 Battersea Power Station 02 Paddington Railway Station 03 Lots Road Power Station 04 Kensal Green Gasholders 05 Gasholder Park 06 IKEA Croydon 07 Tate Modern 08 Streatham Pumping Station 09 Barking Power Station 10 Kingsnorth Power Station 11 Three Mills Moorings 12 Finsbury Market Transformer 13 RRR EWF Belvedere 14 Brown Hart Gardens 15 Canvey Island LNG 16 City Airport 17 Beckton DLR Depot 18 Westway 19 Bow Flyover 20 Blackwall Tunnel Vents 21 Aspen Way 22 Montagu Industrial Estate 23 Bunhill Heat and Power 24 SELCHP 25 Crossrail Custom House 26 Crossrail Canary Wharf 27 Thames Tideway Blackfriars 28 Crossness Sludge Incinerator 29 Greenwich Energy Centre 30 Bloomberg London

Introduction As London’s population swells towards 10 million, the demands upon infrastructure have never been greater. Simultaneously, space in the city has never been at such a premium, and its use never so scrutinised.

The city therefore finds itself at a crossroads.

As the ground-breaking Crossrail and Tideway projects take shape beneath our feet, above ground centuries of industrial and infrastructural heritage are being lost to seemingly never ending commercial development, whilst the few projects that have made their way into modern London are increasingly dividing public opinion.

Meanwhile, new proposals such as HS2 and the now infamous Garden Bridge have drawn controversy en masse, and reignited mainstream public debate about what infrastructure means to Londoners - whilst some architects and planners question if our future cities will need infrastructure as we know it at all.

As the place of infrastructure in London’s architectural identity continues to change, the question is posed of whether infrastructure is cohesively designed into the fabric of the city, or is it simply plonked into wherever there’s space?

The Industrial Evolution

05

04

11 02

As a pioneering city of the industrial revolution, London has seen a wealth of grandiose industrial and infrastructural architecture across generations. The likes of Sir Gilbert Scott’s Battersea Power Station, which masterfully fuses sheer industrial scale with the elegant nuances of Art Deco, have become architectural icons in their own right, much loved by locals and tourists alike.

Battersea is famous around the world for its four white chimneys, but closer to home it has gained notoriety as an expensive infrastructure project which has come to outlive its original purpose quite quickly. After mass demolitions of obsolete infrastructure, the remnants of this generation of architecture have become treasured assets for the city, and the property boom has seen the demolition trend reversed, with Kings Cross joining Battersea as a big redevelopment transforming defunct infrastructure into prime real estate.

However Sir Gilbert Scott’s other famous power station, Bankside, is arguably now the most loved by Londoners after being turned into one of the city’s best

public art galleries.

09

07 03 01

08

10 06

01 Battersea Power Station Redevelopment

02 Paddington Railway Station GWR Offices

03 Lots Road Power Station

04 Gasholders viewed from Kensal Green Cemetary

05 Gasholder Park, King’s Cross

06 IKEA Croydon (formerly Croydon Power Station)

07 Tate Modern (formerly Bankside Power Station)

08 Streatham Common Pumping Station

09 Barking Power Station

10 Kingsnorth Power Station Demolition

11 Three Mills Residential Moorings

Inside Out

12 14

During the rapid urbanisation of the nineteenth century, infrastructure and industry was often built up in close proximity to the areas it served.

This was until the Metropolitan Building Act of 1844, which legally forced noxious industries out of the residential city centres, and forged the identity of much of East London as the industrial heartlands of the city. In a lot of ways this makes logistical sense; the East of the city provides better access to shipping routes, cheaper real estate and is both downwind of the prevailing westerly and downriver on the Thames, so pollution would be less harmful to the city centre than pollution from industrial sites in West London.

However, there are certain impracticalities to infrastructure being removed from the places where its function is needed, and a number of intricate systems inside and outside of the capital have developed to maintain essential functionality. Waste collected in the city centre is shipped East to suburban Belvedere, where it is incinerated to generate electricity, which is transmitted

back into the metropolis via centrally-located transformers.

17

15

16 13

12 Finsbury Market Transformer

13 Riverside Resource Recovery Energy from Waste Facility (formerly Belvedere Power Station)

14 Brown Hart Gardens (Duke Street Electricity Substation)

15 Canvey Island LNG Holders

16 London City Airport

17 Beckton DLR Depot

In Our Back Yard

22

23 18

21

24

19

Whilst most of London’s major new infrastructure is segregated from residential areas, many people still live very close to infrastructure due to either necessity or the planning decisions of the past.

At the turn of the twentieth century, cars were seen as the transport solution which would solve the public health crisis caused by pollution from the transport of the time, namely horse droppings. Later in the century, large parts of the city were designed to incorporate infrastructure that enabled freedom of movement by car as much as possible. Although the heavily polluting coal power stations of yesteryear are no longer a working part of the city, these decisions around transport infrastructure have had a marked impact on liveability in certain parts of London, and the air quality and pollution issues of the present day continue to disproportionately impact the poorest communities.

Where there is new investment in infrastructure, efforts are now focussed towards projects which link together rather than divide areas, and smaller, less

impactful projects going into residential areas.

20

18 Westway

19 Bow Flyover

20 Blackwall Tunnel Ventilation Shaft

21 Aspen Way

22 Montagu Industrial Estate

23 Bunhill Heat and Power Network

24 South East London Combined Heat and Power

Back to the Future

27 30

26

With London’s population still rapidly increasing, the needs of the city are growing day by day, and as the last of the Victorian and early twentieth century infrastructure still in use today reaches the end of its life cycle, the doors are wide open for a new generation of infrastructure.

Bazalgette’s famously over capacity sewer is now severely under capacity and being replaced by the new Thames Tideway Sewer, and in recent years Crossrail has been one of the biggest construction projects in the world. But aside from these massive excavations beneath the city, infrastructure at a local level has been changing too. As well as serving practical purposes in transport and waste water management, these big ticket projects are both notable for their introduction of new spaces into the public realm that are completely independent of the primary infrastructural function.

Some have suggested that in the future we won’t need infrastructure as we know it today at all. Foster + Partners’ Bloomberg London is designed to be selfsufficient, minimising reliance on centralised infrastructure, and adding to public infrastructure with a new urban route through the 25

building.

28 29

25 Crossrail Custom House

26 Crossrail Canary Wharf

27 Thames Tideway Blackfriars Bridge Foreshore

28 Crossness Incinerator

29 Greenwich Peninsula Low Carbon Energy Centre

30 Bloomberg London

Credits Photography and Creative Direction Luke O’Donovan With special thanks to Press Strategy Joanna Bearman Promotional Video Clip Henry Gill Jordi Estapé Lars Faber Consultant Joseph Dudley PLONK! - The architecture of London’s infrastructure 1 of 150 limited first edition run Exhibited as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2018 Hosted by Doomed Gallery, Dalston 16th - 17th June 2018

© Luke O’Donovan 2018

About the Photographer Luke O’Donovan is a young freelance photographer specialising in architecture and cities, based in London.

Available for UK and international commissions.

contact@lukeodonovan.co.uk lukeodonovan.co.uk

lukeodonovan.co.uk

“Is infrastructure just ‘plonked’ into wherever there’s space in London?”

lukeodonovan.co.uk