Summer is here, and Context has gone to the beach as the IHBC’s membership journal is now out, looking at our seaside heritage.
IHBC Director, Seán O’Reilly said: ‘Just now, as some of our smaller seaside resorts seem to be targeted as little more than society’s sink estates, it’s worth remembering just what a wonderful resource they can all represent, and how hard our members and their colleagues are working to revive their fortunes.’
‘So it is critical that we seek answers to problems rising from lacklustre policies that will only generate the costliest of long-term problems. And if ever there was a tool to help us all look beyond those policies and problems, it is our current issue of Context!’
To get everyone in a holiday mood, Context editor Rob Cowan writes: ‘The location at the edge – where the finite world meets the infinite sea and sky, and the ceaseless waves roll and withdraw – gives the seaside a magic of its own. Such magic: sun, salt, seabirds, the architecture of enticement, piers, beach huts, pavilions, helter-skelters, merry-go-rounds, and promenade railings and shelters; and the faded glories of an era when resorts promised fun for all the family (such an unlikely prospect!) rather than places for the elderly to stroll away their sunset years.’
Context’s editorial panel chair and IHBC Project Officer Fiona Newton writes: ‘Architects at the seaside were expected to spark the imaginations of the people who saw and used their buildings through all sorts of exoticism, from the orientalism of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion downwards; or, similarly eschewing the everyday world, through the art deco, modernism or moderne announcing that these were not places constrained by architectural convention.’
And Context’s content? Reliably unconventional:
· Littoral conservation – literal architecture
· Coastline coasters – the seaside funfair ride
· Penarth Pavilion – part-bridge from past to future
· Beach huts – designed, built and rediscovered
· Old boat breakwaters, and
· Historic environment in the sea!
Themed issues of Context also include more general conservation articles as well as news, book reviews and reports from the IHBC’s officers.
Forthcoming Context themes include the IHBC 2013 School for Skills, Heritage and Nationhood, and the Value of heritage.
If you have any suggestions for articles or other material contact Fiona Newton at: editorial@ihbc.org.uk
For an update on current social policy impacts on seaside resorts see our NewsBlog at: LINK
For information on Context’s future issues, guidance for authors, and links to the journal’s archives, see: LINK
Read online issues and see features and articles from the links at: LINK
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