Brighton’s West Pier is an exceptional seaside pier. Although closed and abandoned to the elements, miraculously it still survives as a symbolic part of the English seaside and an enduring feature of Brighton’s seafront. Our task for this semester was to initiate a theme within our project, something that resembles ‘Britishness’.  The idea was to create a pavilion which simply advertises our specific theme for the upcoming Festival of Britain 2022. My theme was ‘Seaside Entertainment’ and what it is that brings people/tourists to the English seafront. In recent years there has been an extreme decline in the amount of people going to the seaside (due to the rise in pay, as well as lower flight prices). More people are taking the time to travel abroad which has developed a larger carbon footprint.

I decided to design an underwater restaurant as I believed this would be the perfect opportunity to bring people together. The festival as a whole has many activities and an underwater restaurant provided a new dining experience. I also planned to design an underwater tunnel to provide a nostalgic effect, an experience where the visitor would walk down a long tunnel (leading to the underwater structure), which would re-create the promenading experience from the original West Pier.

The attractions will be a way to draw people in, and it will give visitors a unique experience within a place they might not normally consider to be the perfect luxurious holiday destination.