Battersea Power Station is an icon of the London cityscape: an Art Deco-era, red-brick landmark on the south bank of the River Thames. Its four chimneys can be spotted miles from the city centre. The Grade II* listed Power Station once powered a fifth of London and the power of storytelling has also been key in its next chapter.
Since opening, it has become a global beacon of creative reuse, with the riverside neighbourhood now home to new homes, offices and over 150 shops, bars, restaurants and leisure venues.
To introduce Londoners and tourists to the Power Station’s new era, Journey partnered with some of the world’s foremost architects and exhibition designers to create a welcome experience that would serve as the perfect prequel to the views awaiting guests atop the station’s northwest chimney. Set in Turbine Hall A, the exhibition features dynamic animations, interactive tables, and immersive media and soundscapes. In a nod to the station’s electricity-generating roots, film, images, particles and colors animate across immersive digital screens.
Descriptive text emerges out of block color, mimicking the movement of Lift 109 out of the chimney top. Throughout the experience, graphics and icons carry the style of technical drawings, with energy flowing along circuit diagrams.
In the planning stages we leaned heavily on a real-time VR model of Turbine Hall A to review media, test processing speeds, before buildout in the real-world space began. Across AR web apps, immersive spaces, interactive tables, LED screens and lighting sculptures, we worked with our partners to tell an aesthetically and tonally cohesive story that would leave visitors as awed by this marvelous structure as they’d soon be by the views 109 meters up.
Lift 109 is a great example of how the past and present can be fused through technology to create a fully immersive experience. Its combination of a historically significant location with advanced technology enhances the visitor’s emotional connection to the space, allowing for an innovative way to engage audiences, while also preserving and repurposing the cultural landmark. The experience is less passive and more interactive, where visitors feel like active participants in the story rather than just observers.
It reflects a growing interest in integrating physical spaces with virtual and augmented reality, allowing visitors to ”travel through time” or experience things that are not physically present, but enhance the real-world experience. The use of immersive storytelling and technology to make these historical locations come alive speaks to a broader trend of deepening engagement in the experience economy.
The idea of using augmented reality or projection mapping to make historical moments come to life inside a building like Battersea Power Station is a fresh way to engage people. It’s not just about adding a layer of digital enhancement to an existing space, but rather using tech in a way that fundamentally reshapes how visitors experience the site, enabling them to feel part of the history.
The experience is designed to transport visitors into the story of Battersea Power Station, integrating storytelling with technology. As the lift transports guests, they are immersed in the visual narrative of the station’s past, showcasing its historical importance, the people who worked there, and its place in London’s industrial history.
Partners
- IMG
- Ralph Appelbaum Associates
- Sysco AV
- CODA to CODA
- Fraser Randall
- Beck Interiors