Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Nature and Society * Theme Park

Abstract

The February 2010 edition of the National Magazine Company's Coast magazine—with a circulation of 41,724—saw the launch of a ‘Coast’ campaign to rescue ‘the once glorious seaside buildings that now sit empty and abandoned’ in the UK. The first such building is Margate's iconic Dreamland, named after the famous Coney Island amusement park in the USA and discussed by Fred Gray in Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Nature and Society (p. 267). Gray, Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Sussex, has produced a fascinating, well-written and lavishly illustrated history of seaside architecture—taking on board the influence of society and nature—from the origins of the seaside holiday in the eighteenth century, to the present day; and in many ways, his book is extremely timely. The campaign in Coast magazine reflects the current resurgent interest in Britain's seaside heritage—boosted by the British seaside holiday presently experiencing a level of popularity not...