Southend-on-Sea is a small resort town at the mouth of the Thames, located 60 km from London. Its main attraction is the pier, which is 2158 meters long. This record-breaking structure has repeatedly become both a victim of fires and the cause of shipwrecks. It last burned in 2005, when its far end, or "nose", suffered the most. After only now completed reconstruction, a cultural center appeared in this part of the pier. It is conceived as a kind of museum of this infrastructure facility, as well as a center of attraction for tourists and townspeople.
Until now, the only entertainment the city could offer them was an amusement park on the shore and a train to the opposite end of the pier. And if earlier the train landed passengers on virtually a bare boardwalk, open to all winds, now the route has a meaningful destination: in the cultural center you can visit an exhibition or a concert, go to a bookstore or sit in a cafe overlooking the river.
The complex, which was created not only by the Swedes from White Arkitekter, but also by the London bureau Sprunt, was designed in a modernist way. Its roof is a giant "hood" of complex geometry, pulled up to the pier and reliably protects the building from winds and precipitation. As conceived by the architects, this shape of the building echoes the waves crashing against the pier.
The architects leave transparent those facades that are oriented to the pier, so that from the outside the building looks like a portal separating the city from the river. The authors chose GRP reinforced fiberglass as the main facing material for them - preference was given to it both because of its light weight (it is clear that the possibilities of pier structures in this sense were not at all limitless) and for interesting external qualities. In particular, such fiberglass changes its color during the day depending on the weather: in the bright sun it becomes white, in cloudy weather it acquires a gray-green tint. At night, the new volume will be effectively illuminated from the inside and will become not only a noticeable landmark in the panorama of the city, but also a kind of beacon, a convenient landmark for passing ships.
