Renovating City Centre Buildings for Modern Living, Norwich
As a practice, Redhead Architects strongly supports the Council’s goal to promote city centre living. By bringing the numerous vacant and under-utilised spaces back into use we can create much needed city-centre residential accommodation to the upper floors, whilst retaining the retail functions at Ground floor level. An increase in density will help to support the many business which rely on passing trade and make our streets safer too.
So many of the upper floors of our city centre building stock sit vacant or are under-utilised.... This proposal seeks to return this partially vacant building to full occupation by providing much needed residential accommodation without impacting on retail functions below. The provision of good quality residential development in our city centres is an effective method to promote city centre living, proven to stimulate the economy through supporting local businesses and the night-time economy, much like most European cities where well-designed apartment living is more common.
We were asked to reinstate a storey, which had been removed during the 1950’s, to provide residential accommodation, right in the heart of Norwich and overlooking many local landmarks including Norwich City Hall and the famous market. We were also asked to redesign the lower two floors to create a mix of one, two and three-bed apartments, together with new lift cores, bicycle and bin stores and two new entrance lobbies to the street.
We used 3D modelling extensively, which allowed us to work around numerous changes in floor level existing floor levels which existed due to the buildings evolution and expansion since the 1900’s.
New elements were designed to make visual reference to various architectural elements present in the existing facade, notably some particularly fine brick detailing, stone pilasters and decorative window surrounds. Part of our new top floor uses cortex steel to form metal window cowels, which make reference to and align with the Romanesque window heads of the 1st floor below. Above these ‘cowels’, a perforated metal sheet would continue the line of the existing cornice adjacent to help to ‘unite’ the two facades. The perforated sheet will have a decorative pattern, making reference to the ornate carved brick patterns present on both buildings. As you look up, you would see a contrast between the very crisp neat lines of the solid metal window cowels set against the perforations above filtering light through. Both upper extensions facing London Street would be clad in metal sheet material making reference to nearby buildings and the wider roof-scape. The additional accommodation to the rear would be constructed from brick to match existing and adjacent walls. Upper stories and window dormers would be traditionally detailed and similarly clad in metal sheet.
