The Huts – Eastbourne is an exciting initiative from Eastbourne Borough Council that invited submissions to their competition to find iconic designs for bespoke beach huts to be sited at intervals along the seafront in Devonshire Ward.
The idea for the ‘Spy Glass’ was to build a structure that has all the nostalgia of an original beach hut with a new physical form that would pay homage to the classic beach hut – an iconic symbol of the British seaside.The Spy Glass is built on a recessed turntable allowing the transparent ‘picture window’ of the hut to be turned like traditional slot binoculars – this can be rotated in a 180-degree direction, to face the sun, seascape or the bright lights of Eastbourne Pier, ‘reacting’ to daily life around it.
At the promenade end of the hut, there is a timber clad entrance door with an overhang formed by the cantilevered daybed inside. This cantilever has 2 port hole windows and an external shower head.