Eight Power Stations That Prove Reuse Beats Demolition

Battersea Power Station stood decommissioned for 39 years before WilkinsonEyre reopened it in 2022 as a shopping, office and residential complex. That's the ceiling for patience in adaptive reuse — and, judging by a new roundup of eight converted power stations, the payoff can justify the wait.

Power stations convert well for a simple reason: they were built to house turbines, so they come with expansive interiors and tall ceilings. Architects get flexibility by the turbine-hallful. What follows is what eight firms did with it.

What can a turbine hall become?

Battersea Power Station, London — WilkinsonEyre. The Grade II*-listed building, originally built in the 1930s, now holds a shopping centre in its restored turbine halls, with glazed apartments built atop the roof.

Ballers, Philadelphia — Good City Studio and Hexagon Studio Architects. The firms revamped the main turbine hall of the 1920s Delaware Power Station in Fishtown into a sports club with indoor pickleball, soccer and squash courts. It's part of a wider plan to transform the plant into The Battery, a mixed-use complex with apartments, offices and a hotel.

Dyson headquarters, Singapore — M Moser Associates, W Architects and Studio Lapis. Dyson placed its global headquarters inside St James Power Station, a 1926 building whose turbine hall became a four-storey atrium framed by exposed black steelwork and a sculptural spiral staircase, with amphitheatre-style seating beside a cafe.

Tate Modern, London — Herzog & de Meuron. The pattern-setter. The museum occupies the former Bankside Power Station, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott — who also designed Battersea. Herzog & de Meuron's transformation opened in 2000 with a cathedral-like gallery in the turbine hall and, per the roundup, ignited a global trend of converting disused power stations into cultural hubs.

Who else is converting?

Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn — Herzog & de Meuron. The Swiss studio converted the remains of a 115-year-old power plant into an art manufacturing hub, refurbishing the brick-clad turbine hall — the only surviving part — and rebuilding the demolished Boiler House in red concrete.

Shajing Village Hall, Shenzhen — ARCity Office. As part of plans to turn an industrial site into a public wetland, ARCity Office restored and extended a 1980s power plant into a community hub, leaving concrete remnants as-found and inserting steel and glass volumes that echo traditional ancestral halls.

Global Leadership Centre, Oxford — John McAslan + Partners. The British studio added learning space and accommodation to Oxford's first electrical power plant for the Saïd Business School, creating a triple-height entrance in the turbine hall, restoring 1890s brick facades and rebuilding the metal-clad upper levels.

Innovation Powerhouse, Eindhoven — Atelier van Berlo, Eugelink Architectuur and De Bever Architecten. The former Philips power plant now houses a dozen businesses in offices arranged along a communal street-like passage, with the original structure and coal chutes preserved.

Why the format keeps working

The eight projects span four countries and nearly a century of source buildings, from an 1890s Oxford plant to a 1980s Shenzhen one. The programme doesn't seem to matter: museum, headquarters, sports club, student accommodation. The turbine hall absorbs them all. Every decommissioned plant currently rusting on a waterfront is, on this evidence, a site awaiting a brief.

By Amara Osei