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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.

Awesome, I hope they start to build a spatial concert library from this, as well as stream to their more popular devices.

Naomi Klein is the most vindicated nonfiction writer in modern history.

aka the good Naomi

“If your Naomi is Klein, then it’s green…”

How is she related to this story?

Out of the loop, what did Naomi write about this?

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Strange they don't mention the Pink Floyd album in the article!

Oh dear.

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 emigres 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 development. They could have donated ten million quid to the Music Venue Trust instead.

The free U2 album looks like the work of a tastemaker by comparison.

Yeah I mean, they’re going to be playing the most bland corporate stuff anyway. It’s just advertising

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.

Of course there's an Apple Store there.

There's also a little local shop for the residents that stocks wine costing over £1000 a bottle.

It's a grotesque place.

No music venue in London is really "gritty" anymore but loads of them are under threat from developers and need all the help they can to survive.

Putting a music venue in the Battersea Power Station development is just making a music venue for the foreign money laundromat.

A shop selling expensive wine? What horror.

It's from a frightfully poor year as well

Come on now, when the rich go over to the artsy neighborhoods and fancy wine shops open up it's called "gentrification", but when they - actually a Malaysian group of investors - make their own place in a run down corner of London, a place that's accessible by public transport to anyone, and does justice to preserve the story of the power station, you call it grotesque.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/20/develo...

It is absolutely still gentrification if you take one of the few places in London where people who work in lower-income jobs in London used to be able to afford to live and make it a luxury zone for unexplained wealth.

There are many gentrification complaints about that development and wider Battersea, and it has been an absolute legal battleground:

It's not actually the angle I was taking. Weirdly, considering it was driven by 1MDB, it's not an illegitimate or corrupt project in and of itself, and there's much more dodgy foreign money going into the rest of Battersea's redevelopment.

My complaint is what they built. It's a dreadful, dreadful project.

There's also a little local shop for the residents that stocks wine costing over £1000 a bottle.

What a weird complaint. I’ve been in grocery stores that have wine costing $500+/bottle. I would expect any wine shop to stock rare and expensive wines. Now, if that’s all they stocked, you might have a point.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/inside-britains-most-expensiv...

If your corner shop sells wine that costs over £1000 a bottle I think you may very well be constitutionally unable to understand the point I am making.

I'm a local to the area, I agree with everything you're saying here (despite the weird backlash) and I know exactly which shop you mean. That shop is one of the most bizarre shops I've ever seen. It's branded as a "general store" but there's absolutely no household brands, everything is about 5x the normal price and all of the shoppers look like rich influencers? I have a theory that the store is used to trial new products before they go to the wider market

And the general store also has bottles of wine costing 10-30 a bottle. I did always chuckle at the bottles of 1972 Petrus in the "fancy wine" section.

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 think it is possibly the most soulless place I have ever visited.

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.

Presumably they’re putting it there because their corporate office is in the power station too.

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.

I don't think Apple hopes to make significant revenue from ticket sales: this venue has seats for only 600. The purpose of the 600 seats is to give musicians optimal conditions for the creation of music (to be recorded or streamed live) and to showcase to selected audiences (e.g., journalists and other influencers) Apple's audio technologies: the venue is outfitted with a custom 48-speaker Spatial Audio sound system.

And like others are saying, it is at Battersea because Apple has about 500,000 sq ft of office space at Battersea. It's their UK headquarters.

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.

$225 for GA tickets is actually pretty decent for a big-name band. Billie Eilish charged $900 when she came to my city.

35m agoHN ↗

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.

You... know they work there right?

I don't really see why this is relevant, but if it is relevant it reinforces my understanding of Apple's allergy to culture.

as soulless, dead-eyed and wealth-obsessed as the people that work at apple

most soulless, dead-eyed, wealth-obsessed places

Seems like on brand with Apple. You can now imagine how concerts will look like.

We can't wait to see how concerts will look like.

Apple just invented concerts, what will they think of next...

In their defense, soulless, dead-eyed, wealth-obsessed describes a lot of central London

Couldn’t disagree more

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.

I suppose you’d prefer the power station to have remained a derelict wreck.

Honestly, people like you are what holds this country back.

Ahh yes because the only destiny of large buildings in London is high-end retail and luxury flats for the wealthy. That's what holds us back as a country, isn't it? Not enough places for the very very very rich.

I didn't at all say or suggest I would have preferred it to stay derelict. It's an absurd straw man.

There are many things that project could have been, for London, that it is not.

But if that's the only way you see progress — the creation of places for foreign wealth to be spent — then yeah, I am holding the UK back from that miserable dystopia.

[1] https://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/retailers/?retailertype=...

I don’t want to dive into Reddit like territory but this is not a fair representation of the place. It is a shopping centre, yes, in the same vein as Westfield or any other created in the past twenty years. There is a Lego store, Uniqlo and many other normal high street stores [1] alongside higher end places but Sloane Street this is not. Throughout the year there are events in the riverside space with stalls from local traders and various other free events, especially for children.

I would argue that it is one of the more successful new developments in terms of “placemaking”, certainly in that part of London. It is very clearly targeted at the residents of the local area who are normal London middle class wealth. The little shop no doubt has bottles of expensive wine but it also has £10 ones.

For clarity; I’m not a resident of the area but have visited a bunch of times, especially with kids.

Making new places is hard and I think they’ve made a decent go of the place.

What holds the country back is anti-growth, financially insecure people who complain about anything and everything.

But if that's the only way you see progress — the creation of places for foreign wealth to be spent — then yeah, I am holding the UK back from that miserable dystopia.

Try actually going there. You might find there aren’t as many “foreign” people as you fear.

What holds the country back is anti-growth, financially insecure people who complain about anything and everything.

That isn't me. I am not complaining about anything and everything. I am complaining about one specific place.

Try actually going there. You might find there aren’t as many “foreign” people as you fear.

I wrote that comment because I have been there. And my fear isn't foreign people — not remotely. My fear is foreign unexplained wealth — one of London's biggest and most intractible problems. It's not xenophobia, it's the corrupting influence of dubious, hard-to-trace oligarch-connected money being sloshed around in the London Laundromat.

The Battersea Power Station project is legit — all done legally — but the project was literally built by people not exactly tenuously associated with 1MDB. And as with many of these developments, many of the people who live in those expensive flats will be doing so thanks to money that was ill-gotten through proximity to power elsewhere in the world.

It's central London. Of course it's a place for foreign wealth; as long as we get to keep enough on the way. We need to stop being snobby about the very real need of the country for foreigners to spend money on stuff we sell.

Ridiculous nonsense, twit.

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.

I personally see no issue with using prime real estate for… prime housing.

Affordable housing can be built somewhere that is actually… affordable.

39m agoHN ↗

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 outsmarts you: 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...

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's in zone 1. Every flat in that area, no matter how much of a cupboard it is, has a huge luxury: location.

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.

Dozens of proposals were made for dozens of years. Nothing was done, it sat there rotting away.

Indeed. Absolutely sterile inside. They could have done so much more with it.

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.

What would you have preferred the area become?

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.

Am I wrong in thinking Battersea is absolute murder to travel too as well? Theres one line to a tiny station and it gets overcrowded a lot.

Not great but it's not the worst station in the network, I must say. Less frustrating than the whole confusing Canary Wharf situation.

Am I wrong in thinking Battersea is absolute murder to travel too as well?

You can get there by boat if you're in another better connected part of Central London.

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.

4m agoHN ↗

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. As a sibling points out Apple already have their UK headquarters in the building so it's not too surprising they're expanding.

Ah its the power station from Red Alert

Ah it’s the Wonder I always try to rush and can’t get to

Amongst other films a few scenes in the 1994 MacGuyver movie (Lost Treasure of Atlantis) were filmed inside the power station before it was renovated.

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.

OK, but the effect you are worried about won't be caused by Apple's owning 1 venue with a capacity of 600 people when there are many 100s of much larger venues.

Would an iDevice be required to enter? /s