As certain pedants like to inform you, Battersea Power Station is actually Battersea Power StationS — one half of it built in the late 1920s/early 1930s, followed by a 1950s chaser.
You can't tell that so much from the exterior, but you certainly can with the former power station's control rooms. The restored Control Room B was unveiled in 2021, and with its glossy utilitarian goings-on, could be a set from Thunderbirds.
Now, images of the renovated Control Room A have been released, and if anything, it's even more spectacular than its older sibling. Wall upon golden wall of gauges, dials and buttons were used here for decades to divvy up power across London — distributing electricity to the likes of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.
Control Room A very much HAS been used as a set, too. When the Beeb is broadcasting during the climax of The King's Speech? That's filmed here. As was this dadaist piece of nonsense from the Pythons:
The teak parquet herringbone floor is what you'd expect to see in a swanky ballroom, rather than a power station. And just get a load of that ceiling: the rippled geometric stylings reminds us of the porch of St Olaf House near London Bridge. Makes us want to order a corpse reviver #2 and dance the Charleston underneath it.
They really don't make 'em like they used to.
Now for the bad news. While Control Room B is set to open to the public as a drinking space later in summer 2022 (and honestly, that's pretty cool), the art deco Control Room A is being saved as a 'a unique events space', so you'll likely have to be invited to a do/hold your wedding reception here in order to get a gander at all this art deco splendiferousness.
The renovations to the control rooms are part of a gargantuan overhaul of the former power station, which also includes some somewhat controversial new buildings neighbouring (and enveloping) Giles Gilbert Scott's original architecture — as well as a chimney that'll be fitted with a 'great glass elevator'/viewing platform.
Still, while Battersea Power Station hasn't been pumping out electricity since 1983, just looking at pics of the new Control Room A is making us feel tingly.
