Ralph Applebaum Associates designs immersive exhibition and customer expertise for Battersea Energy Station’s new chimney elevate, reflecting on the ability station’s historical past and cultural influence.
Within the newest a part of a phased reopening of Battersea Energy Station, one of many constructing’s recognisable chimneys now accommodates a glass elevate, which affords guests a panoramic viewing level.
The constructing – which as soon as supplied a fifth of the town’s vitality and is a recognisable a part of the London skyline – has been restored by WilkinsonEyre from a derelict state following its decommissioning from 1975-83.
Whereas it has reopened as a mixed-use improvement of retail, occasions area, places of work for Apple and luxurious flats, one chimney hosts the Elevate 109 expertise with an exhibition designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates incorporating media design enter and manufacturing from Squint/Opera.
“The chimneys are the icon of the Energy Station, so we all the time wished to ensure they had been in correct use”, explains Chris Davies, affiliate at Wilkinson Eyre.
“Two of them are used for flumes from the vitality centre so are nonetheless used as chimneys, however the northwest chimney has such vantage level over the river that we wished to discover a approach that you could possibly take the general public up there.”
Elevate 109, designed and constructed by Otis, is known as after the peak of the chimney tops and the purpose at which its glass elevate rises above them to offer guests a 360-degree outlook over London. Positioned throughout the Thirties Turbine Corridor A, the expertise and exhibition introduce the ability station’s historical past and a notion of it as a generative pressure – not solely of electrical energy, however of tradition and group.
RAA director Philip Teft says that as “narrative designers” for a time-based expertise comparable to this, a rating was produced, comprising three elements: “an thought of powering up, and telling the story of Battersea; absolutely charged, superb folks with the view; after which descending, and motivating folks to take pleasure in Battersea and take a little bit of it residence with them within the store”.
RAA mission lead Mirko Cerami provides that there have been two sorts of narrative: “One we name the cinematic, and the opposite that we name the up-close.”
As guests strategy by the Artwork Deco faience partitions of the turbine corridor, the cinematic narrative creates “a dialogue with the whole thing of the turbine corridor, catches the attention of holiday makers and works as a beacon for the set up”, says Cerami. A “celebration of the info” of the ability station’s historical past unfolds throughout three screens flanking a large-scale gentle set up impressed by a turbine.
The centre level of the exhibition is a big interactive desk centered on “Powering London”. Its contact display screen floor permits guests to study how vitality was generated, with interplay prompting visuals of burning coal and swirling steam. The extra interplay, the extra vitality is collectively “generated”, inflicting the lighting set up above to glow and whirl.
The additional two sections are “Powering Design”, introducing the design of the Energy Station and “Powering Tradition”, which paperwork the constructing’s function as each inspiration and placement for music movies, concert events, movies and different cultural occasions.
Squint/Opera says that the digital toolkit created with RAA consists of AR apps, the interactive desk, LED screens and lighting sculptures working “cohesively to inform a compelling story”.
Whereas the exhibition options round motifs, impressed by the chimney, for the graphics “textual content emerges out of block color in the identical approach the elevator emerges out of the chimney,” and different graphics and icons are “drawn within the type of technical drawings and animated with vitality flowing alongside circuit diagrams”, Squint/Opera provides.
Guests then move right into a “360-degree” media area the place graphics of vitality particles altering state could be interacted with by touching the partitions. A primary elevate reaches the bottom of the chimney – soundscaped with the recollections of people that as soon as labored on the Energy Station – earlier than guests are able to enter the round glass elevate.
Ascending at 1m per second, rings of sunshine on the chimney’s partitions illuminate the journey whereas exposing the construction of the chimney and the mechanism of the elevate. The lighting is choreographed to a soundscape to “evoke rising vitality”, RAA says.
Whereas the mental half is the exhibition at its base, Teft says, the true “emotional crescendo” is the rise to the highest of the elevate, “and then you definitely come out on high of London”.
The bizarre glass construction and system of the elevate requires the equipment to be contained within the backside, with a hoop across the chimney supporting 100 tonnes of kit. “A tremendous piece of engineering”, Teft says, “but in addition it’s augmented by the sound of birds”.
All pictures by Joshua Atkins
