Battersea Power Station is buzzing. Christmas trees twinkle, skaters navigate the riverside ice rink, and shoppers crowd what is now, surely, Europe’s most thrilling mall. On its first weekend open more than 250,000 visitors came through its doors.
And from Monday, visitors will be able to spend the night in the development’s first (and for now, only) hotel, the 164-room Art’otel. I’m the first guest to stay and I’ve brought my husband and six-month-old baby along to “help” test its family-friendliness. It’s the sixth outpost from the group, which also has hotels in Amsterdam and Budapest, and it has a ringside seat for the power station. In a hook-shaped new-build next to Frank Gehry’s cubist residential towers, it’s right by the power station’s south side.
The industrial beast is an old friend. I live locally and have watched its recent transformation, chimney by chimney. In 2018 I had a hard-hat tour of the site when the power station was covered in cranes and open to the sky. Four years, a pandemic and millions of pounds later, it has emerged gleaming.
From Art’otel’s curving 15th-floor bar, Joia, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, I feel as if I’m within touching distance of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s decorative brickwork — the towers were inspired by New York’s art deco skyscrapers — and up here I can admire the delicate patterning. Six million bricks were used to build the original structure and 1.3 million new ones came from the same Gloucestershire quarry for its restoration. It remains one of Europe’s biggest brick-built buildings. The 50m chimneys rear up like enormous Greek columns. On the other side of the bar, looking south, I can see as far as Crystal Palace.
Joia, which is also a restaurant, opens in February 2023 with the top Portuguese chef Henrique Sa Pessoa at the helm. This is the first London restaurant for the chef, who is behind Lisbon’s two-Michelin-star Alma.
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I’d bet good money on it being a party from the off, certainly in the bar. Designed by London-based Russell Sage Studio, which did the art-filled Fife Arms, the palette is LA-pink and sage and there’s all manner of comfy seating from fancy beanbags (the baby approves) to sugar-pink velvet banquettes and bucket chairs. I like the Alexander Calder-style mobiles too (so does the baby).
From Monday guests will be able to eat in the ground-floor restaurant, Tozi Grand Café, which offers Venetian-style cicchetti in an enveloping red-themed space that reminds me of a circus tent. Red sculptures in Joan Miró shapes hang from the ceiling and tapestries are arrayed like flags in the window. The artwork is by the Spanish artist Jaime Hayon, who designed most of the hotel interiors. It’s a gallery space for Hayon, whose work will be displayed on rotation — one painting, with its bowler hat and pipe, nods to René Magritte.
Here, we try olive oil-infused negronis — smooth rather than oily and as punchy as they should be — with calamari and crunchy, salty focaccia. My pasta with wild boar ragu is easy to eat with one hand (key, these days) and the cannoli with whipped ricotta from Italy is somehow both rich and beautifully light.
The staff are sweet with our daughter even when she tires of playing peekaboo with the crisply starched napkins and lunges instead for our cutlery and glasses. I can see myself parking up with the buggy for a coffee under one of Tozi’s heat-giving umbrellas on Electric Boulevard (excellent Zara opposite) and dropping into the next door deli, Tozi counter, which will open in spring.
The clue’s in the name — Art’otel is all about the art. Hayon has created an imaginative space with interiors that echo the building’s curves. His yellow anime-style sculpture, The Dreamer, greets guests in reception; walls feature his signature masks; and red shelves filled with jugs from Hayon’s collection — the theme is water — flow into the open-plan seating area beyond.
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An artist studio will showcase a programme of work by local artists. Minna George, who has a studio in Clapham Junction, is in residence during my stay and the studio is filled with her textured paintings of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. George will be running workshops on drawing the London skyline in January. These aren’t just for guests — locals will be welcome to take part in the hotel’s cultural programme, which is set to include book groups, pottery classes, art tours and yoga on the roof.
For those who are staying, the rooms are vibrant with spectacle-like round mirrors above the beds and gold half-moon handles on the royal-blue wardrobes. Standard rooms are a decent size with kingsize beds and personalised mini bars — above the tenth floor, they come with skyline views. Suites feature original artwork by Hayon — in ours, the enormous Masterpiece Suite, which has its own bar and funky seating area — it’s a playful bright red tiger-like face. More importantly, our daughter manages to sleep for a record-breaking five hours — if only I’d known that what she needed was a luxury suite, a twinkly skyline view and the low, white-noise rumble of trains.
At night blue sparks flash as they go in and out of Victoria, the tips of the Albert Bridge towers glitter and I can see Wembley on the horizon. The neighbouring apartment blocks in what’s called Circus West are an invitation to the nosey. I spy on who is looking after their pot plants and who isn’t and, in the morning, watch dogs yomping around the garden at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.
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There are more expansive views from the roof, which has a heated pool (it’s small, so better for snaps than laps) and bar. From up here London’s skyline is a toy town. The Shard seems to sit on the power station’s roof like an undersized decoration. Yes, you can gaze on some of the power station’s penthouse gardens — all very neatly clipped — below. (Bear Grylls has a penthouse on the other side, next to the river.)
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Go up the power station’s northwest chimney in Lift 109, and the 360-degree view stretches all the way to Hyde Park or Crystal Palace.
Guests of Art’otel will be in prime position to explore the power station and it really is a marvel, the restoration expensively and thoughtfully done. The A station, which was completed in 1939, has its deco flourishes newly intact while B station, added postwar in the 1950s, is more functional and austere (Levi’s is this side, while Chanel is the other).
Searcys serves champagne next to one of the 66kv circuit breakers (essentially a giant on/off switch) and a pattern of dark bricks marks where the turbines in A station were located. There’s a bar in Control Room B, and Control Room A, which featured in The King’s Speech, is an events space — though it will also be open to the public on certain dates.
There’s plenty more within easy reach — not least one of London’s loveliest green spaces, Battersea Park, where Harry and Meghan once bought a Christmas tree, and where locals queue for coffee at the Pear Tree Café. Tate Britain is about a 30-minute walk and the Uber boat goes all the way to Greenwich.
But, you know what, Battersea is now a destination in its own right. And that’s all power to the station.
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Jenny Coad was a guest of Art’otel, which has B&B doubles from £400 (artotellondonbattersea.com)
