Battersea Power Station

How we'd explain it to our mothers

Managing a €19 billion global portfolio, Treasury Holdings are pioneers in property development. They first approached us to assist them in their planning application for the redevelopment of a major central London property they’d just acquired. The largest undeveloped urban site in Europe, actually. It was the 200-acre property that houses Battersea Power Station, the much-beloved, heritage-protected landmark on London’s Southbank. The Station itself was decommissioned in the 1950s and the property has been deteriorating ever since; several developers had tried and failed to make something of it, stirring rumours in local pubs that Battersea Power Station carried something of a curse. So how could our client break the curse of BPS? More importantly, how could they win the confidence of the community, city planners and investors as they unveiled their ambitious master plan?

Behaviour change

Public and stakeholders rally behind the plan and planning permission is granted.

The path to change

A cohesive messaging strategy, which was executed as a set of 10 films, a flexible multimedia presentation and a live exhibition on-site that literally walked visitors through the story from start to finish.

How we did it

Selling the four main virtues of the proposed plan for the site (commercially robust, sympathetic to the existing building, environmentally sustainable and the fact it could be delivered just as promised), we cast Treasury’s visionary architect and master planner: Rafael Vinoly as our on-screen guide. His incredible draughtsmanship was the basis for our creative approach; we used his sketches at key points in the story to walk viewers through the project and plan. It was as if they were getting the architect’s personal tour of his unique vision. Interviews and archive footage were intertwined with original CGI material to create the film series, retelling the history of this iconic site, exploring its massive potential and introducing the real people behind this latest development plan. In this way, we were able to connect the audience directly with the vision (and visionaries) at work in Battersea.

And?

In early 2011 Wandsworth Council granted Treasury Holdings planning permission. Job done.