sea space hastings: diploma two thesis

As an island nation, our relationship to the sea is extremely intimate. For centuries, Britons have had political, commercial and recreational links to the sea and its coastal towns.  Towns which were once thriving economies, drawing thousands of visitors, now seem desolate, abandoned, forgotten...

 

There needs to be new urban interventions into these environments in order to bring them back to life.  The way in which we perceive these places need to be altered and re-defined.

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what is a marina?    

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In Hastings the marina will become the vehicle for regeneration, through the creation of an Urban Arena, compromising four different edges responding to their distinct environments. Two of these edges are completely new and have been defined by manipulating the existing coastal landscape.  They have the most complex functions and in essence represent the more ambitious conditions "terminus" and "habitation".

 

The other two edges are inserted into the existing urban fabric and attempt to re-interpret what these environments can be "recreation" and "trade". These four conditions are all stitched together through one continuous a corten steel canopy, visually and physically connecting the scheme, celebrating the oxidisation of steel in the sea air.