How we made Tate Modern

‘People said if we were going to save a power station, it should be Battersea. But I thought it was too big’When we first visited Bankside Power Station for the original Tate Modern competition in 1994, it seemed like the castle in Sleeping Beauty – an enormous urban mountain that was completely overgrown, surrounded by barbed wire and prickly roses, as if protecting the hidden beauty inside. It seemed dangerous. It is totally unimaginable now, but this was a huge chunk of the