48-storey Doon Street tower: first images

As we reported last month, the development is master-planned by architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and includes an indoor swimming and leisure centre, 355 flats, a new headquarters for the Rambert Dance Company, public open space and shopping.

The site is currently used for car parking, a family & children's centre and CSCB's offices. The latter are transferring to a new neighbourhood centre, due to be completed in 2007.

The indoor swimming pool and leisure centre provides the community with a much needed facility. The centre includes an 8 lane 25m swimming pool and learner pool, a 120 piece gymnasium, two aerobics studios, a 4 court multi-purpose sports hall, changing village, cafe and creche. It will be operated by Greenwich Leisure Limited, also a social enterprise. Capital costs and revenue subsidy will be provided from income generated by the sale of flats housed in a 'slender' 48-storey tower affording 'breathtaking' views of the Thames and the City.

An area of 1800 sq m is given over to public open space including a new public square at the site's western end with links to Waterloo station and Waterloo Bridge.

CSCB says that the scheme is conceived as a terrace of different buildings each expressing its function and yet forming an overall composition on the street. The materials chosen for the new development continue the theme of the site's neighbours (National Theatre, IBM, Hayward Gallery) with light coloured masonry, reconstituted stone and white render.

Each building has different details picked out in various self-coloured materials such as anodised aluminium for the window frames in the residential tower, yellow patinated copper cladding for the set backs to the courtyard housing, and Corten for the cladding to the swimming and leisure centre.

The height of the proposed development has been met with surprise and concern by some local residents given that CSCB's history is in low-rise, low-density housing.

An exhibition of the proposals can be seen at Coin Street Community Builders' Information/Exhibition space on the ground floor of Oxo Tower Wharf until Sunday 30 October (9.30am-6pm weekdays; 11am-6pm weekends). The exhibition panels can also be viewed as PDF on the CSCB website.