People taking a bracing walk along the promenade in the Lincolnshire resort of Mablethorpe later this month may well stop in their tracks when they pass a new addition to a row of dilapidated beach huts.
Staring back at them will be a Baroque-framed reflection of themselves with a backdrop of sand, sea and sky. Welcome to the 21st-century version of the humble beach hut.
This futuristic installation, enigmatically titled Eyes Wide Shut, featuring front and back floor-to-ceiling mirrored sliding doors, is one of five individually designed huts being installed along a 10-mile stretch of coast from Mablethorpe to Anderby Creek in time for the UK's first beach huts festival, Bathing Beauties, on September 22 and 23. The creations, the winners of an international competition to reinvent the iconic British beach hut, couldn't be further removed from the traditional coloured shack - a deliberate move by lead artist Michael Trainor.
Recruited by Lincolnshire County Council to help revive the economically depressed east coast, Trainor soon recognised the area's best asset: some 500 largely neglected huts scattered along a little-known stretch of coast that actually has some very fine sandy beaches.
'The beach hut is one of the few building forms that has been seriously overlooked by contemporary architecture,' says Trainor. 'They are perceived as a treasured feature of our coastal landscape, as quintessentially British as fish and chips and the knotted hanky, but are usually little more than a painted shed.'
The designs could afford to be striking because there are no complex building regulations to crush creativity. And, Trainor points out: 'They occupy the most beautiful strip of real estate on the very edge of the land and should express that free and glorious outlook.'
Commissioned and paid for by the local council, with a little help from the EU, the futuristic huts will form a linear gallery of contemporary architecture, and will be rented out on a daily or weekly basis. Not that the people hiring these unusual buildings will get much peace - as passers-by stop to gawp at hideaways such as Jabba. You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled across a sci-fi film set when you see 'the world's first contemporary cave' nestling among the Mablethorpe sand dunes. Sitting on its own away from the other huts, the pear-shaped structure is made of layers of cedarwood, glass and colour-anodised aluminium and has aircraft-style doors and a viewing platform.
The first five huts to be installed will include Trainor's own work, Come Up and See Me, a surreal take on a gin-and-tonic with two 'straws' that will channel light into the interior and an eco-friendly 'swizzle stick' that doubles as a wind turbine to light up a 'wedge of lemon'. There'll also be a rooftop balustrade for viewing the landscape.
Many of the existing huts along the coast have been vandalised, so the new designs had to be mindful of this. Eyes Wide Shut will have polycarbonate 'mirrors' at either end (cheaper and more vandalism-proof than glass). 'They allow a voyeuristic peep out back into the real world,' says Julia Feix, one half of architectural practice Feix & Merlin.
The interior will feature photographic images of a forest clearing, a candlelit chandelier and those reflective one-way windows looking out at the sea from the front, and the town from the back.
The picture-frame exterior is all the more startling next to the neighbouring pagoda-style huts, whose corrugated iron roofs were made from World War Two air raid shelters.
The new cutting-edge designs may also seem particularly out of place in Mablethorpe, a mini version of 'kiss me quick' Skegness that attracts a loyal band of holidaymakers from the East Midlands and the north of England, who come for the funfairs, cabaret and amusement arcades.
A few miles south of Mablethorpe, at Sutton-on-Sea, a slightly more conventional-looking new hut, Halcyon, made of layers of plexiglass and red cedar, will be installed later this month. This resort has a more genteel air. Gaming machines are banned, pretty gardens border the seafront and the beach never gets crowded, even in peak season.
'It has a real charm and feels like it's stuck in a Georgian time warp,' says Helen Matthews, who chairs the Maplethorpe and Sutton Tourism Forum. She believes the rest of the coast suffers from the 'Skeggy' effect. 'It has given us the stereotype of the "Fun Coast", but we have so much more to offer than push-penny machines and funfairs.'
Large sections of the coast are nature reserves with plentiful birdlife, while a growing number of people come to watch the grey seals giving birth in the sand dunes at Donna Nook between November and December. Tourism officials are planning a Wild Coast festival in November.
Matthews has owned two adjacent huts on Sutton's South Promenade for 12 years and loves bringing her family here. 'There's a real hutters' lifestyle - many of the huts have been handed down through the generations. We often visit them out of season and sometimes have a fire on the beach on Christmas day.'
It's also hoped that the Bathing Beauties festival, which includes a competition for beach hut owners to showcase their own spruced-up properties, will help push the cultural attractions of the area, which was much loved by Tennyson and featured in DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers
Matthews loves the new beach hut designs, particularly Oyster Pleasance, one of the second round of huts to be installed next April. The oyster-shaped hut opens and shuts like a shell and is encased by bumpy copper tiles, which will weather to a sea green. 'It revolves to capture the sun - that is pure genius.' Another creation is a hut-sized version of a camera obscura, commissioned by Trainor and the East Lindsey District Council for Mablethorpe.
A life-size version of Oyster Pleasance will be on display, along with models of more than 100 competition entries, at a touring exhibition. A number of northern and southern English resorts are interested in hosting the display - it may even head overseas.
But not all hut owners are so enthusiastic about the new designs. One of the proposed sites was switched from is original spot in Chapel St Leonards following opposition from another hutter. Joan Wilks, 87, who has kept her hut at Sandilands for family holidays for more than 40 years, is also unimpressed. 'Maybe I'm getting old but they sound a bit comic to me. Why do you need a revolving hut when my hut opens at the front and back,' she says.
A further three futuristic huts will be installed next spring. In the long term, Trainor envisages a stretch of 'mini Guggenheims' dotted along the coast, creating a new centre for seaside architecture. If they prove half as controversial as Anthony Gormley's beach sculptures, the Lincolnshire coast will well and truly be on the tourist map.
· The Bathing Beauties festival (bathingbeauties.org.uk) takes place on 22 and 23 September between Mablethorpe and Anderby Creek. The huts will be available for hire, subject to demand, this autumn and then from next Easter. Daily rates are expected to be around £20-£25, depending on the location.
Contact Bob Suich at East Lindsey District Council on 01507 601111 for further details. For more information about the area visit visitlincolnshire.com
