Peter Murray director of the London Festival of Architecture, exhibition director at New London Architecture and chairman of Wordsearch.

When people talk of a ‘typical English seaside town’, I see a place where time has stood still since the 1970s; a place that has gently degenerated following the advent of the package holiday and the exodus of British tourists to warmer climes with more predictable weather conditions. This shift in holiday habits ripped the economic heart from England’s resorts. Once the tourists stop coming, coastal towns have a marked and fundamental commercial disadvantage to their land-locked cousins – they only have half the catchment area. They are literally and economically on the edge.
Littlehampton in West Sussex faces as many problems as other resorts, if not more: it contains four out of the top five deprived wards in West Sussex; an inner ring road was built to relieve traffic congestion but separated the centre from the rest of the town; in 1993 the rather splendid Victorian Beach Hotel was demolished to make way for a crescent of nondescript houses and an ugly residential tower built overlooking the beach. The boatbuilding and chandlery works have all but disappeared
Nineteenth century photographs show a windmill sited at the west end of the promenade. It is claimed that on his deathbed Billy Butlin whispered that his greatest regret was that he had demolished the Littlehampton windmill when he built the beachside amusement park.
But the fundamental built form is sound. The town is sited at the mouth of the River Arun, the second fastest flowing river in England. In the nineteenth century packet boats plied across the Channel to Dieppe and Le Havre. Today leisure craft, fishing boats and the odd aggregate coaster use the harbour. Arundel is just five miles up the river and Littlehampton once formed part of the Norfolk estate. South Terrace which overlooks the sea is a mixture of late Georgian and Regency. Elegant villas and terraces were well built as investments for the Duke’s children, many of them in a Shavian Arts and Crafts-style with tile hung and brick facades.
We have a house that overlooks the green that separates the town from the promenade and the sea. The green is one of the delights of the town plan and creates a very different relationship of beach to town than that in places like Brighton and Worthing where the road runs tight to the promenade and beach.
About four years ago we became aware of plans by the owner of a kiosk on the promenade directly in front of the house to redevelop it with a restaurant designed by his builder. It was a design devoid of any architectural qualities. The local authority gave it permission because it was desperate for better facilities on the seafront. All attempts to stop the building through the planning process failed and it became clear that the only way to protect the spectacular site was to buy the business. Which we did, and then realised we had to do something with it. My wife, Jane Wood, ran the kiosk for a season while planning a replacement. During this time she was able to research the market but also to sound out local people about the proposed building.
Thomas Heatherwick’s design was striking, not the sort of building anyone might have expected on this stretch of seaside. Thomas presented his ideas to local community groups on the beach while Jane’s conversations across the counter converted the doubters. It was a model consultation programme. When it went in for planning there were no objections and even two letters of support. The publicity generated by the cafe has dramatically changed attitudes to the town; it has brought a new range of visitor and attracts customers all year round.
Jane has recently commissioned the young architect Asif Khan to design a ‘shack’ kiosk on the town’s West Beach. Khan’s design is based on the footprint of an existing kiosk and uses a system of opening windows and walls to create a delightful and flexible pavilion that can provide shelter during inclement weather and an open dining space when it’s fine.
Littlehampton is an ordinary place, its ordinariness and unpretentiousness form much of its charm. But small architectural interventions can have extraordinary effects. David Chipperfield in Margate, Tom Bloxham and Flacq at Morecambe, Tim Ronalds at Ilfracombe and Heatherwick and Khan in Littlehampton are fighting back for the English seaside. As we all start to watch our carbon footprints, holidays closer to home are the thing of the future.

AT189/June 2008 p96