Planning Committee Comment
07/01226/F Former Eastern Electricity Board Site Duke Street
Demolition of existing buildings and erection of a mixed use development comprising Class A2/B1 offices, Class A3 Restaurants/Cafes, Class A4 Wine Bar, Class A1 retail floorspace, Class D1 Art Gallery, sculpture park and 24 residential dwellings
A major development whose many good points are outweighed by the drawbacks. The decision to replace the massive 1956 Eastern Electricity buildings along the river eschews the opportunity to reinstate the older street scene with narrow alleys down to the river from Charing Cross and Westwick Street, since the developers require large office floor plates not otherwise available in Norwich. Moreover the whole building is more massive than the façade which it replaces, rising above the level of the new St Andrews car park and wrap round housing, creating major difficulties as the scheme steps down to Anchor Quay. As a result, there are no breaks in the river frontage that could bring light through to enhance the river scene and also offer views back into the centre of the site. This and the intense development off Charing Cross allows little light for the courtyard, narrow and surely poorly lit between over-tall buildings.
The scheme’s virtues include a convincing modern idiom, the extension of the riverside walk 
(ending in a blank wall, this demands further initiatives from the City Council to extend it through the Anchor Quay development) and the promise of a sculpture court, oddly positioned away from the major pedestrian flow, and a new art gallery.
There remains one major challenge: to preserve and reinstate the 1912 doorway and City coat of arms from the entrance to the offices to the Norwich Electrical Supply Company by ET Boardman. This fine doorway was carefully designed and inset between its framing pilasters. The cartouche with the City’s coat of arms is placed under a curved pediment whose bottom is broken in a composition freely inspired by the marble windows over the doorways of Michelangelo’s New Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence (1520-1534). It forms the last link with an important part of the City Council’s history. The Council had bought this site in the 1880s, setting up the hugely successful Electrical Supply Company, whose works were designed by Edward Boardman (d. 1910) but whose work was completed by the fine ‘Queen Anne’ offices with their 1912 doorway.
All photographs are views of existing buildings - 18.12.07