That reminds me a bit of The Harmsworth Room [1] in the Churchill War Rooms, where you can dine while you stare at the "original 1940s electric generator wall complete with dials and switches". Very cool space!
I'd been to the War Rooms decades ago, when they were simply a WWII restoration.
It was an obscure grim bunker where important decisions had been made during the worst period in 20th century British history.
I remember a small electric bell at an exit with a small sign "Immediate danger above if ringing". Just a warning not to go outside during bombings.
Apparently it's been gentrified to the point of ridiculousness.
How do you mean, gentrified? I went for the first time earlier this year and it was an amazing experience. It's definitely very museum-like, and not cheap to enter, but the rooms all look like perfect time capsules and the audio tour is excellent.
Well my comment was half in jest, but No Logo talks at length about the encroachment of megabrands into everyday life, and the replacement of the "public sphere" with controlled spaces that conform to the brand's image.
In this case, while the Apple Concert Hall may superficially look like just another music venue (many of which are privately owned in their own right, obviously). But its musical programme will almost surely follow a different set of guiding principles, in conformance to how Apple wants to project their brand to consumers. And the goal itself of hosting live music performances takes second stage (heh) compared to that of marketing them for streaming consumption. Speaking of which: it's not mentioned in the article, but I would be _extremely_ surprised if Apple didn't make this move with Vision users in mind.
The redeveloped Battersea Power Station is one of the most soulless, dead-eyed, wealth-obsessed places in all of London. This is a terrible place to put something like a music venue, unless your target market is the adult children of people with unexplained wealth, and I think it speaks to Apple’s sanitised, emotionally-distant, luxury-focussed worldview that they would consider it.
Incredible building. Awful space. They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.
I beg to differ. I stayed in Battersea for a week while exploring London. I found the place very welcoming, safe and inspiring. It’s convenient to get to and from with its dedicated underground line.
I can see how it fits the Apple
brand experience very well (they don’t do gritty stuff). In fact I believe there’s already an Apple Store there.
Well, the type of places that OP described are full of service people, paid the best wage that people with little training can make, because they can ALWAYS be nice and welcoming… even when being screamed at and spat upon by the rudest, meanest, and most despicable nepo-jerk you could imagine!
But, aside from the convenient access to the underground, I’m really intrigued by what you found “inspiring” about this place?
(I don’t know a single thing about it, never even heard of it, so I’m torn as to which of you two to believe… lol)
It's a combination of a park, a residential neighborhood and a shopping center in the renovated power station. The station is incredible building, with its brick construction. The residential buildings themselves are also special, with some designed by Frank Gehry, and the shopping center is inside the power station building and has an family-rated-steampunk feeling to it.
We stayed in an apartment overlooking the station front and it was a lovely sight.
I know someone who used to live in the new apartment development around the old power station; I think it is possibly the most soulless place I have ever visited. If you've seen The Good Place, then, eh, imagine a densified version of that, I suppose. It was really kind of amazing. Difficult to describe exactly why it was so off-putting, and I suppose tastes differ, but it really was unpleasant.
The power station itself is an impressive structure, mind you. But of all the things they could have done with it, it's a shame they did this.
I mean, you can say that Fred again and co. are "sanitised", "corpo music" and etc. But quite a lot of people will happily buy the tickets, and go to the concerts. The only reason I'm bringing him up, is cause Apple featured his live concert.
Obviously Apple is in the game of making money in the end. Your local DJ that plays sets at 2am on a weekday probably won't be performing at their venue. But I wouldn't call every random friend group "adult children emigres with unexplained wealth" as a single target audience. A lot of people will spend a couple of hundred $ for a fun night out, and they don't have to be extremely rich.
> Your local DJ that plays sets at 2am on a weekday probably won't be performing at their venue.
This is a really tone-deaf straw man caricature of what I am saying, I'm afraid.
> But I wouldn't call every random friend group "adult children emigres with unexplained wealth" as a single target audience.
It's a pretty solid, not even satirical summary of many of the people who live in that development. It's not really a place for Londoners.
If I were a gambling man I would suggest to you that tickets for those events are likely to start at more than the couple of hundred dollars you are suggesting people spend without thinking. The cheapest standing tickets for the next Oasis tour (at very large music stadiums) are more than $225.
> If I were a gambling man I would suggest to you that tickets for those events are likely to start at more than the couple of hundred dollars you are suggesting people spend without thinking. The cheapest standing tickets for the next Oasis tour (at very large music stadiums) are more than $225.
So I live in California where everything is famously expensive (but I hear the same of London). $225 for a concert with a famous artist on a big tour is pretty standard. Oh, and since you clearly don't go to concerts, it's pretty standard for standing tickets to be more than seated, because they're usually closer to the stage and people want to stand around and dance.
> Oh, and since you clearly don't go to concerts, it's pretty standard for standing tickets to be more than seated, because they're usually closer to the stage and people want to stand around and dance.
Oh dear me, this is funny. But not in a way you will understand.
Oasis was going for more here in Tokyo for standing tickets. I know multiple people who went, despite it being way above their budgets. I’m not sure why you think $400s is something top 20% of income levels can’t afford. Keep in mind, the average age is higher than it was ever before. There are a lot of single / DINK people, who can easily shell out some money without a blink, and not have a lot of money in their savings.
> I’m not sure why you think $400s is something top 20% of income levels can’t afford
I am not sure why I am replying to a sentence formulated like this but you surely understand I said nothing about $400, the top 20% of income levels, or even not being able to afford it?
If you’re going to disagree with me it might be better to disagree with what I said, not a straw man you constructed for the purpose.
I know that this is a common way to argue here but it’s just weird.
Sorry, I took it as the main part of your argument is that whatever Apple creates will not be for the general mass “unless your target market is the adult children of emigres with unexplained wealth”. My argument is, people who pay $400+ for a ticket are fairly ordinary people. I guess, I was arguing against that.
Normal people experience all that, and add Ticketmaster tickets on Klarna for a big gig. This is not about groceries, in which case I would agree with you.
I consider top 30-40% income bracket as ordinary people.
Also normal people. It's just that, $400 isn't that big of a number. I personally consider it big, I have to convince myself very hard before I spend $100 on any ticket, but people who has less income than me will use their credit cards without a second thought.
I've been fortunate enough to work in some environments where you kinda get the gist of "how people function", and it has completely opened up my eyes. A single person who is experiencing housing stress, can buy $19 strawberry, be upset about gas prices, and also spend $400 on a concert.
I feel like you're overusing the strawman card to avoid engaging with their argument. I think your take is overall very pessimistic. They likely won't have acts like Oasis in that venue and the pricing will probably be premium but broadly attainable, like their products.
Sorry, but I'm not. It literally was not something I said or was actually representative of my argument, so I don't know how it is something you can say "I don't know why you think…"
Why would I respond to such a mischaracterisation except to say it was a mischaracterisation?
For clarity: I am not talking about affordability. I am talking about the profoundly anti-culture nature of that specific place and the people who can afford to live in it. As I said in my comment, there are other ways Apple could contribute to live music that didn't involve putting a pet music venue in such a profoundly soulless place.
Why would I respond to such a mischaracterisation except to say it was a mischaracterisation?
It's called being charitable. Trying to understand what their point is and responding to that for the sake of advancing the conversation, rather than grinding it to a halt with pedantic quibbles over inaccuracies or poor phrasing.
I've never been so I can't really comment on the atmosphere of the building.
You made a pretty specific point and prediction about the price of tickets, which I responded to, but now you're not talking about affordability. Because the suggestion that they might not be doing the most evil oligarchic thing ever in this place doesn't fit your narrative.
They’re a big corporation, it’s to be expected. The closest we have to a big corporation doing real culture is… red bull or maybe boiler room. And neither of those is close. Battersea Power Station was fucked the moment we sold it off to foreign investors. A media piece about Apple opening a “music venue” when they’re actually just adding a studio to their office is symptomatic of how uninspired we are as a country, rather than any failing by Apple.
I lived in the development for a year and to me it’s a monument to what it is to be British nowadays. We are a great nation that has so much potential which we only squander. I can’t bring myself to think bad of Apple for this.
I think their target audience are Apple Music subscribers who are going to watch the recordings of the live videos; they could probably care less who attend's their concerts. It doesn't seem like they want a music venue to support London's live music scene, but a music venue to produce content for their platform.
Frankly, that just makes it worse.
>They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.
oh, what the world could be like if music streaming platforms actually supported the industry that power them.
It turned into a luxury place because that's where the highest margins in construction are. Every developer wants to build high margin houses, nobody wants to build low margin houses.
City development must cater to all its inhabitants, and if you have a prime estate like the Battersea Power Station, it's a failure, from the city's POV, if you burn that only on high margin development. From a negotiation standpoint, the city negotiated badly here. The city has to accommodate the needs of less wealthy inhabitants in other means now, but without the negotiation leverage that a high margin property can provide.
If you view it like this, the complaints "only luxury flats" are pretty rational. The city negotiated badly.
Imagine you're the mayor. You want to hire companies to build prime housing and affordable housing. Every company only wants to build prime housing, because that's where the money is. If you only give out contracts like that, basically nobody will apply to build affordable housing.
You're not dumb, of course, so your next step is to say, "if I give you the contract to build prime housing, you also must build affordable housing". That's not ideal for the developer, because the time spent on building affordable housing is time they don't spend on stuff where they make proper money, but at least they can make some money. They agree to take the deal. You think, problem solved, but turns out the developer is smart dumb: they structure the company in a way that they can chicken out of building the affordable housing. In real estate, it's very common to have every building project be its own limited liability company so that one failed project doesn't influence the others. In this case, you put the affordable and the luxury housing together in one Ltd, build the luxury housing, extract the profits by moving them to the parent company and then declare your Ltd bankrupt, meaning they unfortunately can no longer build the affordable housing.
As a mayor, you observe how you're being cheated, you get real angry but the walk through the courts is too slow, and your voters demand action now. Realistically, you do the court route in the background, but you learned your lesson and now you tell the developer "before I give you a high margin luxury contract, you must have completed affordable housing first".
Alternatively, you mix the buildout into the same building so that you cannot open the luxury flats/office space without having completed the affordable part. Either way, affordable first, luxury second.
That is basically the story of the London property market.
Another issue is how do you even build affordable housing on land worth millions? The only way to make that work is if the government owns the land forever and commits to never selling it. Which is kind of what the government was going for after WWII with council houses, but Right to Buy ruined that.
There actually is some "affordable" housing in the wider project but only because there was a very long battle to keep the developers to their legally-bound promise to build some affordable property that they — of course — tried to wriggle out of.
It was only dragged into zone 1 in order to charge higher fares to recoup some of the cost of building the Northern Line extension. If it weren't for that, it'd be zone 2 - and one of the less well-connected bits of zone 2, that.
I don't have that much of a problem with it, tbh - before the development it was a weird light industrial bubble, disconnected from the rest of the city. Now it's a weird bland commercial bubble, disconnected from the rest of the city.
And we've lost the Marco Polo House, the home of QVC, and gained Apple. Seems about a wash in terms of cultural value as well.
It's not hard to imagine that not every derelict wreck has to turn into the new battersea power station. In fact, it's hard to think of a less inclusive redevelopment project in the UK than battersea power station.
Ok but that doesn't contradict the original point that the area ended up soulless and expensive, so your "people like you are what holds this country back" is still unjustified (and rude)
Southwark is now full of purpose-built marginal tourist attractions. The big Ferris wheel. The springy Millenium Bridge. The Tate. The Globe Theater rebuild. And I see that the Oxo Tower has now put in a bar. Battersea itself now has a giant glass elevator that rises up one of the smokestacks and comes out the top. All the sights of historical importance are elsewhere.
I spent a few weeks in that area once. It's apparently less grungy now.
FWIW, most of the things you describe there are affordable and very grounded in London.
The Millennium Wheel, that is a tourist attraction, obviously, and is a slightly odd experience and not terribly cheap but it's accessible to everyone. The Globe Theatre is pretty grounded in London culture and is really affordable.
The springy bridge is a functional thing that goes between the City and the more affordable and touristy bits of Bankside.
Tate Modern is IMO a triumph. Free to enter and chock-full of properly amazing stuff that is free to view. (Go see "In Search of Vanished Blood" by Nalini Malani). There are other free galleries along that side including in the development around the Oxo tower.
For all the glitzy aspects and the touristy bits, it actually still feels at least a little like London (and is just round the corner from both normal working London and
heritage London).
None of that is even close to being as soul-deadened as the Battersea Power Station development, which exists outside culture.
I'd have to push back on that somewhat. When I worked there I saw all sorts of people emerging from the flats around the power station. Young familes, young professionals, none of them appeared "wealth obsessed".
In fact, looking at rents on RightMove, it's not out of whack with typical rents for a nice area of London.
Let us not forget this area of London (Nine Elms) was previously a pretty grotty industrial wasteland that you tended not to go to, and the power station itself was at risk of collapse.
While I agree completely, what else was going to happen?
Malaysians poured £10bn into that hole, and the only tennants who'll give them the smallest chance of recouping that money are trillion dollar multinationals.
It's a shame though. The best shopping centres are the ones full of dodgy little shops but they're long gone in new builds now. Cambridge used to have a few good examples but they've all been pushed out.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I kind of enjoy that new development vibe. Plus, the historic structure is now well-preserved. Better than many alternatives.
Yay, vertical integration! This shit needs to be stopped. Similarly to movie theaters and movie studios, venues, ticket providers and distributors/streamers/studios should not be allowed to be owned or controlled by the same entities.
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[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 78.1 ms ] threadhttps://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/retailers/control-room-a...
[1] https://www.churchillwarroomsvenuehire.co.uk/spaces/harmswor...
Apparently it's been gentrified to the point of ridiculousness.
In this case, while the Apple Concert Hall may superficially look like just another music venue (many of which are privately owned in their own right, obviously). But its musical programme will almost surely follow a different set of guiding principles, in conformance to how Apple wants to project their brand to consumers. And the goal itself of hosting live music performances takes second stage (heh) compared to that of marketing them for streaming consumption. Speaking of which: it's not mentioned in the article, but I would be _extremely_ surprised if Apple didn't make this move with Vision users in mind.
The redeveloped Battersea Power Station is one of the most soulless, dead-eyed, wealth-obsessed places in all of London. This is a terrible place to put something like a music venue, unless your target market is the adult children of people with unexplained wealth, and I think it speaks to Apple’s sanitised, emotionally-distant, luxury-focussed worldview that they would consider it.
Incredible building. Awful space. They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.
But, aside from the convenient access to the underground, I’m really intrigued by what you found “inspiring” about this place?
(I don’t know a single thing about it, never even heard of it, so I’m torn as to which of you two to believe… lol)
We stayed in an apartment overlooking the station front and it was a lovely sight.
The power station itself is an impressive structure, mind you. But of all the things they could have done with it, it's a shame they did this.
It's really difficult to put into words, isn't it?
There are many places in London that are equally wealth-drenched that manage to retain some charm, locality and aspiration to them.
Obviously Apple is in the game of making money in the end. Your local DJ that plays sets at 2am on a weekday probably won't be performing at their venue. But I wouldn't call every random friend group "adult children emigres with unexplained wealth" as a single target audience. A lot of people will spend a couple of hundred $ for a fun night out, and they don't have to be extremely rich.
This is a really tone-deaf straw man caricature of what I am saying, I'm afraid.
> But I wouldn't call every random friend group "adult children emigres with unexplained wealth" as a single target audience.
It's a pretty solid, not even satirical summary of many of the people who live in that development. It's not really a place for Londoners.
If I were a gambling man I would suggest to you that tickets for those events are likely to start at more than the couple of hundred dollars you are suggesting people spend without thinking. The cheapest standing tickets for the next Oasis tour (at very large music stadiums) are more than $225.
So I live in California where everything is famously expensive (but I hear the same of London). $225 for a concert with a famous artist on a big tour is pretty standard. Oh, and since you clearly don't go to concerts, it's pretty standard for standing tickets to be more than seated, because they're usually closer to the stage and people want to stand around and dance.
Oh dear me, this is funny. But not in a way you will understand.
I am not sure why I am replying to a sentence formulated like this but you surely understand I said nothing about $400, the top 20% of income levels, or even not being able to afford it?
If you’re going to disagree with me it might be better to disagree with what I said, not a straw man you constructed for the purpose.
I know that this is a common way to argue here but it’s just weird.
I think you’re out of touch.
Normal people are experiencing housing stress, energy price shocks, and wondering who the hell buys a $19 strawberry.
I consider top 30-40% income bracket as ordinary people.
I've been fortunate enough to work in some environments where you kinda get the gist of "how people function", and it has completely opened up my eyes. A single person who is experiencing housing stress, can buy $19 strawberry, be upset about gas prices, and also spend $400 on a concert.
Why would I respond to such a mischaracterisation except to say it was a mischaracterisation?
For clarity: I am not talking about affordability. I am talking about the profoundly anti-culture nature of that specific place and the people who can afford to live in it. As I said in my comment, there are other ways Apple could contribute to live music that didn't involve putting a pet music venue in such a profoundly soulless place.
(of a given performance ticket)
It's called being charitable. Trying to understand what their point is and responding to that for the sake of advancing the conversation, rather than grinding it to a halt with pedantic quibbles over inaccuracies or poor phrasing.
I've never been so I can't really comment on the atmosphere of the building.
You made a pretty specific point and prediction about the price of tickets, which I responded to, but now you're not talking about affordability. Because the suggestion that they might not be doing the most evil oligarchic thing ever in this place doesn't fit your narrative.
Seems like on brand with Apple. You can now imagine how concerts will look like.
I lived in the development for a year and to me it’s a monument to what it is to be British nowadays. We are a great nation that has so much potential which we only squander. I can’t bring myself to think bad of Apple for this.
Frankly, that just makes it worse.
>They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.
oh, what the world could be like if music streaming platforms actually supported the industry that power them.
Honestly, people like you are what holds this country back.
City development must cater to all its inhabitants, and if you have a prime estate like the Battersea Power Station, it's a failure, from the city's POV, if you burn that only on high margin development. From a negotiation standpoint, the city negotiated badly here. The city has to accommodate the needs of less wealthy inhabitants in other means now, but without the negotiation leverage that a high margin property can provide.
If you view it like this, the complaints "only luxury flats" are pretty rational. The city negotiated badly.
Affordable housing can be built somewhere that is actually… affordable.
You're not dumb, of course, so your next step is to say, "if I give you the contract to build prime housing, you also must build affordable housing". That's not ideal for the developer, because the time spent on building affordable housing is time they don't spend on stuff where they make proper money, but at least they can make some money. They agree to take the deal. You think, problem solved, but turns out the developer is smart dumb: they structure the company in a way that they can chicken out of building the affordable housing. In real estate, it's very common to have every building project be its own limited liability company so that one failed project doesn't influence the others. In this case, you put the affordable and the luxury housing together in one Ltd, build the luxury housing, extract the profits by moving them to the parent company and then declare your Ltd bankrupt, meaning they unfortunately can no longer build the affordable housing.
As a mayor, you observe how you're being cheated, you get real angry but the walk through the courts is too slow, and your voters demand action now. Realistically, you do the court route in the background, but you learned your lesson and now you tell the developer "before I give you a high margin luxury contract, you must have completed affordable housing first".
Alternatively, you mix the buildout into the same building so that you cannot open the luxury flats/office space without having completed the affordable part. Either way, affordable first, luxury second.
That is basically the story of the London property market.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/20/develo...
I don't have that much of a problem with it, tbh - before the development it was a weird light industrial bubble, disconnected from the rest of the city. Now it's a weird bland commercial bubble, disconnected from the rest of the city.
And we've lost the Marco Polo House, the home of QVC, and gained Apple. Seems about a wash in terms of cultural value as well.
Proposed venue looks in keeping with this theme. Capacity of 600 and I'm sure whatever tickets will be priced to keep the hoi polloi away.
I spent a few weeks in that area once. It's apparently less grungy now.
The Millennium Wheel, that is a tourist attraction, obviously, and is a slightly odd experience and not terribly cheap but it's accessible to everyone. The Globe Theatre is pretty grounded in London culture and is really affordable.
The springy bridge is a functional thing that goes between the City and the more affordable and touristy bits of Bankside.
Tate Modern is IMO a triumph. Free to enter and chock-full of properly amazing stuff that is free to view. (Go see "In Search of Vanished Blood" by Nalini Malani). There are other free galleries along that side including in the development around the Oxo tower.
For all the glitzy aspects and the touristy bits, it actually still feels at least a little like London (and is just round the corner from both normal working London and heritage London).
None of that is even close to being as soul-deadened as the Battersea Power Station development, which exists outside culture.
squints
> The big Ferris wheel.
Surely Lambeth.
> The Tate.
Modern? Yes. Britain? No, that's Westminster.
> And I see that the Oxo Tower has now put in a bar.
Hasn't it had a bar since it opened one in 1996?
You can get there by boat if you're in another better connected part of Central London.
In fact, looking at rents on RightMove, it's not out of whack with typical rents for a nice area of London.
Let us not forget this area of London (Nine Elms) was previously a pretty grotty industrial wasteland that you tended not to go to, and the power station itself was at risk of collapse.
Malaysians poured £10bn into that hole, and the only tennants who'll give them the smallest chance of recouping that money are trillion dollar multinationals.
It's a shame though. The best shopping centres are the ones full of dodgy little shops but they're long gone in new builds now. Cambridge used to have a few good examples but they've all been pushed out.