It’s an unmistakable London icon, with its four white chimneys still towering against the skyline – and the public imagination. And now Battersea Power Station has been re-invented after years of dereliction.
It’s an unmistakable London icon, with its four white chimneys still towering against the skyline – and the public imagination. And now Battersea Power Station has been re-invented after years of dereliction. It’s become one of London’s highest-profile mixed-use developments, a space that combines residential, retail, and heritage/cultural experiences. It was originally designed in 1929 by prominent architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed London’s classic red phone boxes.
This year, JPC by Samsic was proud to take on the site’s cleaning and waste services – and add to its cultural fabric too. One of our team, Raquel, created a sculpture to express her experience of Battersea Power Station (BPS), and now it’s on display in front of house. Raquel’s artwork was inspired first by the cover image of one of her father’s records she’d known when she was young: Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals,’ which pictures BPS with a helium balloon in the shape of a pig floating above it. When she came to the UK in 2012, she lived in the area, and the iconic structure, along with its rich contribution to London’s social history, became increasingly fascinating to her. It was in late 2016, when Raquel started working at BPS as a cleaning operative, that she started to work on her sculpture, using materials found around the site.
The piece is composed mainly of concrete, on a polystyrene base. It caught the eye of BPS senior management, and is now on display in Scott House, the concierge for the first chapter of the redevelopment project. When Samsic’s own leadership team visited (including UK CEO Jonathan King, left in photo), they were equally impressed by Raquel’s work, and offered Raquel a £200 thank-you gift. Raquel is so proud to be part of the re-imagined Battersea Power Station, and of the unique way in which her own personal history has become intertwined with the BPS legacy. We’re proud too, and we’re very grateful to the BPS team for their generous initiative.
