Bexhill Seafront Shelter Competition

The architectural challenge of this design was not simply to create an imaginative structure, which was timeless, distinctive, contemporary, innovative, fun, inspiring as well as performing functionally and practically, but to find a way of relating it to the established environment, whilst adding place making character and identity, as part of a larger regeneration project.

What links the beach, the Pavilion and bandstand and the promenade with its Edwardian structures and houses and the town centre beyond? It is the natural environment, the sea, the shore, the sky and the wildlife. And easily found in nature e.g. in the landscape and the coastline, are approximate fractals (a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced size copy of the whole, a property called self-similarity).

Moving from an abstract concept to creating a physical structure, the design evolved using a simple fractal shape, Sierpinksi’s triangle, to form both the shelters and the kiosk as birdlike images, floating gently over the promenade, inviting visitors to look closer, to shelter, to experience.