Tightly caught between two spreads of train lines, one viaducted, one in a shallow cutting, and bisected by the gently curving viaduct of a third, the site still has a sense of the industrial edge-land it was when Battersea Dogs & Cats Home moved there in 1871. Then, this stretch of the Thames' southern bank was crusted with industry. Today it is still dominated by the massive bulk of Battersea power station to the north, which has risen, powered up, fallen silent and become an empty hulk, only now to be pimped into a new form of life in the current development funded by Malaysian investors. Morethan 3,000 new homes and offices, including Apple's new UK headquarters, will crowd out the horizon: a wall of 18-25 storey blocks, some designed by Foster and Gehry, swaddling the former power station. It is a plot in peak flux.
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