Simon Conder is no stranger to these parts. The Black Rubber House designed by his practice won numerous awards including the RIBA’s Stephen Lawrence Prize in 2004, and put Dungeness on the architectural map. Now he has completed a second house a few hundred metres away, El Ray, for a couple and their baby. It is the last house but one before the road runs out at the western end of the beach.
Click Here To View The Full ArticleBlending with the Dungeness environment and being protected from it were major considerations for Simon Conder as he wrapped an 1890s rail carriage with a new skin.
A sea-scented breeze blows steadily across Romney Marsh, sending ripples through a threadbare carpet of yellow and green grasses. The horizon is an almost straight line broken by a thin squiggle of shacks that stitch together the land and sky. Should the weather change, the mood might quickly become bleak, even hostile, but the sense of escape from conventional life is exhilarating and has attracted a scattering of makeshift homes along the beach.
This is Dungeness, a dynamic shingle promontory jutting into the English Channel from the Kent coast, and the largest shingle structure in the UK. There is something of the Wild West about it. Telegraph poles lean at precarious angles, lurching between ramshackle huts held together by layers of paint that look as if a strong gust might strip away their patchwork cladding. Two lighthouses stand at the tip of the beach and behind them, to cap off the surreal scene, lurks a nuclear power station.
