Even when the power had been turned off, people still saw Battersea Power Station as the Art Deco masterpiece it was – created to meet the energy demands of post-war London. It was built in two phases. The first phase in the early 1930s produced a rich and decadent interior before it was completed in a more austere fashion during the 1950s. Those four chimney stacks still make the building instantly recognisable, as they rise above a new 42-acre neighbourhood that reaches out along the banks of the River Thames.