Bathing Beauties between Mablethorpe and Chapel St. Leonards
‘The
Beach Hut is one of the few building forms which has been seriously
overlooked by contemporary architects the world over. They are perceived
as a treasured feature of our coastal landscape, as quintessentially
British as fish and chips and the knotted hanky, but in reality
are usually little more than a painted shed’. Michael Trainor,
Lead Artist & Project Curator.
The brief to re-imagine the simple beach hut produced an amazing
array of design solutions which catapult our ideas of seaside micro-architecture
into a new aesthetic rather than an endless pastiche of imaginary
heritage. Traditional seaside references are gone, replaced by structures
incorporating wind turbines, saunas, camera obscura, viewing platforms
and space-ace materials with only the most oblique of witty nods
to sandcastles and stripey windbreaks.
Nine of the models on display are in the process of being commissioned
for full-scale construction in Summer 2007 along a 10mile stretch
of coast between Mablethorpe
and Chapel St. Leonards on the Lincolnshire
coast, UK.