Battersea Power Station: the latest attempt to save the crumbling landmark Like New York and Paris, London was one of the pre-eminent cities of the first part of the 20th century. Despite this, few monumental examples of art deco architecture still stand testament to the era. Of those surviving, the most notable is probably Battersea Power Station, with its quartet of towering chimneys continuing to dominate the capital's skyline today. The urban park that would occupy the station's interior. Image: Terry Farrell & Partners The control rooms, with their art deco switches and levers, will also be retained, but the idea is to exhibit them within a new urban park rather than surround them with, say, a shopping centre that commercialises the features, and loses the context of what they originally were. This isn't simply an architectural vision - Sir Terry actually has his firm paying for the planning application out of its own pocket, a rare example of an architect putting his money where his mouth is. The plans are a radical new proposal to kick-start the surrounding developments without the need to demolish the power station. That approach was suggested as a way to save the site's current owners NAMA (the Irish government's bad debt administrators) up to £470 million. In doing so, NAMA took a depressingly familiar approach of putting money before heritage. With the site now offered for sale on the open market, let's hope that whoever ultimately secures ownership of the landmark will be willing to protect its legacy. If Farrell's plans do get the go-ahead perhaps we will get to keep those iconic chimneys, so future generations can marvel at the incredible industrial past that helped, in so many ways, to make London the Big Smoke.