Just back from a quick getaway with the family down to Sandbanks on the Dorset coast, and quietly contemplating why it has become just such a hotspot, from being...well...just English seaside when I used to go there as a child. I wonder if maybe the answer lies in the forward of a treasured book I have, Joel Meyerowitz's iconic collection of colour photographs 'Cape Light': '..... it is just a finger of land in the ocean and the light is the ocean's light, opalescent and eloquent...' This is about Cape Cod, of course, but I do muse that it could be talking about the Sandbanks peninsula. On a narrow spit of land, with the ocean to one side and lagoon to the other, here too the light is the ocean's light. And, like any party, the geographic boundaries only concentrate the sparkle.
Modern Movement architecture of the 1930's always seems to be easier to find at the seaside. The existing thirties architecture of this area has now taken on the spirit of Miami Beach and become a sort of Sandbanks Deco, as the developers compete for anywhere you can possibly build a beach house. But it's a beach that sweeps on for seven miles and it, plus the space, the light, the (almost) relentless sea breeze, all the main things at Sandbanks, are unchanged.
1 Sandbanks beach huts photo by dachalan 2 Sandbanks beach house, photo by dachalan 3 Deco house, photo by Ned Trifle All from Flickr under CC BY license
