Building London’s future into the shells of the past

London has a fine recent history of building the future into shells of the past.

Highbury Stadium was converted into flats, maintaining a good deal of the structure of the façade of the stadium, into which the flats were built. The Bankside power station on the banks of the Thames was converted into Tate Modern art gallery at the turn of the twenty-first century, and its brother the Battersea Power Station, will be converted into flats by a Malaysian investment company.

In Hoxton and Shoreditch old warehouses that were once used to manufacture furniture are now being used to house design studios and architects.

Deyan Sudjic points out that the city of London itself is an example of this, ‘Its old residential core, sheltering in the approaches to its fortress, has made the transition into the world’s busiest banking centre’.

Tags: Bankside power station, Battersea power station, furniture industry, Highbury, Highbury Stadium, Hoxton, London architecture, Shoreditch, Tate Modern, warehouses