Bayside, Worthing

This is one such location. The site was formerly occupied by the Aquarena swimming pool complex and its car park - a rather utilitarian 1960s development that had fallen into poor repair since its closure. The building's prime location right on the seafront had never fully been exploited - its blank facades at street level were a missed set of opportunities. The local council had a specific vision for its replacement; any new development would need to act as a catalyst for regeneration on a pivotal site where the town meets the beach. Public space was also an important factor, and the provision of new homes a key council priority.

In 2013 a new leisure centre 'Splashpoint' opened on the site next door, releasing the former swimming pool for redevelopment.

The design, mass and height of the proposals have from the very start been rigorously informed by and tested against local context and history to ensure they complement, extend and improve the existing urban fabric. Our design proposal is not a single building but rather a series of responses to quite different urban settings: three streets (Merton Road, New Parade and Brighton Road); the square adjacent to the leisure centre, and the seafront esplanade.

The project provides mostly residential accommodation. 141 homes of a mix of tenures occupy an open-ended garden square of 6 storey buildings - a familiar urban typology found all along the south coast. On its south-west corner is the marker building that rises to 15 storeys.

Private amenity spaces for residents occupy the ground floor and include a pool, gym and lounge areas. It was established from an early stage that the seafront would be given over to public realm. A landscaped private residents’ garden open to the south faces into a large public space on the seafront where a standalone glass and timber single storey pavilion with striking yellow canopies houses a new cafe: Bayside Social.

The placing of buildings on the site negotiates the quirks of this part of Worthing’s seafront where a continuous seaside parade is broken by areas of parkland and buildings more haphazardly placed in relation to the line of the coast. Bayside’s tallest element marks the end of the town beach and provides a counterpoint to the low, linear leisure centre while the open-ended block of apartments steps back to align itself with the terraces on New Parade to the east. This move creates the generous seafront public space within which the cafe pavilion sits.

Brighton Road along the northern edge of the site now has an active street frontage with ground floor commercial units. The Merton Road elevation to the east is set up as a series of brick town houses reflecting the architectural informality on this street.

The buildings retreat from the site boundary on the west to enlarge the space outside Splashpoint on Brighton Road and create a more fitting entry-space for this significant public building.

The tower’s sophisticated appearance belies its simplicity: an orthogonal, fully glazed building is set back behind the slim white metal balcony railings that become the principal feature of the elevation. The balconies produce a lantern-like structure with a rippling translucent surface. The shape of the balcony alternates at each floor between a rounded rectangle and more curvaceous bowed shape - reflecting the playful seaside architecture of its neighbours along the Parade, but also providing both shelter and openness at each level.