Nine Elms: Rising From the Rubble

Compared to the other great European cities, one of London’s enduring strengths is that it keeps evolving. Paris might be more beautiful, but the centre has lain mostly untouched, like a museum exhibit, since the 19th century. But London keeps building, bringing old bones to new life. Nowhere is this more obvious than at Nine Elms, on the south bank of the Thames at Battersea, where a languishing in-between space, that for years was overshadowed by the derelict Victorian hulk of Battersea Power Station, is giving way to a neighbourhood fit for the 21st-century, a micro city within the city of dazzling residential towers, sculpted parks and commercial premises showcasing the best of the world’s food, fashion, art and design.

In D’Arby’s and Oxeye, Nine Elms already has two of the best new restaurants in the city. The Sky Pool, a 25-metre swimming pool suspended miraculously between two towers, 35m in the air, has made Embassy Gardens the most talked-about – and certainly the most photographed – new residential accommodation in the city. There are shops and boutiques and offices and gyms and markets and parks. There are two new Tube stations, one at Nine Elms and one at Battersea Power Station: an extension of the Northern Line. The old station at Nine Elms had been shut since the 1960s. Since then, people looking for a smart new London address would not have paid it a second thought. Now it will be near the top of their list.