With my wife Geraldine, we formed a company called Red or Dead back in 1980 on Camden Market. That went on to be a big international fashion brand which won us British Designer of the year Awards for three years.
Promptly we sold it, back in the mid 90’s, and did pretty well out of that. It left us in a fantastic position because our name was very big and from then we have been able to choose projects that excite us and we have concentrated quite heavily on regeneration since with Hemingway Design.
We’re designing some pretty big housing developments, which are doing well, and working with the Government on some big social housing schemes. This project here, the Boscombe Overstrand, has excited us all, the whole team, because it is unusual and it’s in great position – we love Bournemouth, we love Boscombe. We live just down the coast.
It’s the renovation of a historic building that is just totally and utterly cool. You link that to what’s happening with the proposed surf reef and the whole thing is going to be great. With restaurants and these kind of beach huts and this kind of take on a beach hut. Bournemouth is full of wonderful old beach huts in all the bright colours, but this is something totally new and will appeal to a different audience.
The whole project celebrates mid-century Britain. The pier isn’t your traditional Victorian pier – it’s a concrete pier and all of these things are important. The whole thing is going to have a fantastic brand. It’s a great new brand for this part of the world. It’s going to put Boscombe back on the map, and what with the surfing, with this, with the cafe’s that are going to go below. It is a damn exciting project!
We got involved in the project by being spotted by the local planners and the Councillors from Bournemouth who came to a talk I was doing, a seaside regeneration talk. That was over in Littlehampton earlier in 2007. They must have liked what I said and invited us down here. They said come and look at this and when we saw it we just went, “Oh my God, we’ve got to get to work on this”.
I’ve been very lucky throughout my design career to have a fantastic partner, my wife, Geraldine. We met when we were teenagers, we’ve worked together through all the businesses, and we each have our different skills. Geraldine is at the office right now designing exactly what these beach huts are going to be like and it’s been great working together 27 years. Last year in the Queen’s birthday list, we got MBE’s, and it wasn’t even half each, we got one MBE each which was great!
We’ve got a home in Australia. It sounds very flash but we learnt quite a lot from Western Australia. It’s a fantastic sustainable way of life out there, both in terms of how they plan their cities but also how they treat their waterfront. People go out and surf but they can come in and they can come into a comfortable place that’s well designed, that makes you smile, that makes you feel warm, that also has got great food on offer and it’s not just your typical grubby cafe. So the whole of this has got to flow really well. It’s got to have places that you come in, that you can get dry, that you can shower off, that you can come inside, that you can make yourself a coffee or a hot chocolate, that you can sit on balconies on decent furniture and look out at this, these fantastic views across the ocean, to the pier, to Hengistbury Point, and down onto Sandbanks. This is a very special place and so we have to make it a very special design and it will be world class.
It ticks all the boxes that we like at Hemingway Design. It’s a great social project. It is in a town that’s just about to go through some great regeneration. Seaside regeneration is important to me. I am a patron of the British Seaside Network and I think it is one of the most undervalued things that Britain has. Something like 70% of the population live within 30 odd miles of the seaside. One thing about Britain is we’re an island, we’ve got a long coast and it is our most valuable resource. When you look at programmes that have been on television like “Coast”, which was a massive success, the public love it and we’ve got to do start doing better with it.
We’re not just going to make it all ‘surf themed’. It’s got to be a place that the local community can think, “Yeah, I’d like to come and rent a place on the front today and bring the kids down and invite Gran and Grandma and the relations who haven’t been to see us for a while”. It’s got to have all of that. You can be out surfing or you can just be on the beach making sandcastles with your kids so it’s got to be inclusive. We don’t want to make it one-dimensional where it’s just totally for the new surf reef and for the surfing community. It’ll be a place where you can come, you can be a resident of Boscombe or of Bournemouth and think, “I want to be a part of that and I can come down here”. You can buy a lease on one or you could just rent one by the day and invite your Grandma and your Granddad to come here or some relations who haven’t been for a while. It’s going to be a place where you can sit out here on decent furniture and look at the views of Hengistbury Head, look at this fantastic ocean all the way down through Bournemouth and onto Sandbanks. We’ve got to celebrate this place because it deserves celebrating.
It can also have a positive impact on Boscombe by the sheer PR that it will bring because it’s a unique project. You don’t just get projects like this just happening. I can’t think of anything else in the UK that is like this. The very fact that it is celebrating a different era of British design, that mid century design. The very fact that the pier doesn’t look like what people imagined to be a Victorian wrought iron pier – it isn’t. The very fact that these are beach huts, but not in the traditional way that you think of beach huts. All of that will help, and also it’s got a well-known design team working on it, which might just help a little bit!
You know from the outside, when you walk in on the prom, that it is from Hemingway Design. We have to change the railings because they are too low for today’s Health and Safety, and we’ve got some pretty cool ideas for the railings. When you come in you’ll know by even looking at the staircases and the entrances, the art that is going on the wall, the colour, the freshness of it all. When you come into these regenerated units you’ll see it from the units that are there, from the art on the wall again, and it will feel like you’ve got your own little bijou pad overlooking this wonderful coastline here. You won’t want to leave, but you have to because you’re not meant to sleep here at night!
At the moment it is pretty one-dimensional when you get inside the building. There are all these single beach huts and there are 72 of them. But we are changing that all around so there will be roughly half singles and half doubles and the doubles are pretty substantial. They will take a large family and your friends. And then there are some great corner units. If I wanted to be one of the first ones to get one of these, I’d want to queue up for one of the corner units. There are corner units on both floors to die for with these curled edges, with massive balconies that overlook right down to Hengistbury Head on that end and right down to Sandbanks on this end here.
We want to celebrate the history of the place – to bring out the DNA of the late 50’s and early 60’s. So we’re not going to wreck this and change it. The doors are staying the same, a lot of the colours are staying the same, but it’s all going to be freshened up. But we’re also putting it into the 20th Century and a lot of these will be made bigger. We knocked some of the walls down to make them double sized so that they can be used for families. But each separate one is going to have its own identity. So when you get inside, it’s going to have artworks on the wall that respond to Boscombe, respond to Bournemouth, and respond to the seaside. You’re going to be able to book online and say, “Well I like that one with such and such on the wall”. We are designing special formicas and kitchen units all with special insignia and imagery on it, that all kind of remind you about the sense of place of here. We don’t want to reveal too much at the moment because people will start to see it in the New Year. There is going to be half of these for rent and half for sale and I think we want to buy one because we are so excited about it!
