With the coast eroding fast, I guess these will be floating out on the sea in the not too distant future. There is something quite liberating about the temporariness of the architecture here, especially in a country that is so cramped and the land so contested. There is a freedom on the coastline that is not found elsewhere.

Looking across the estuary from Harwich some more skyline markers.

The coast is marked in many ways: buoys, shipping lane markers, offshore defensive structures. These clear graphic shapes catch the eye and lead you from one point to another. I am looking into incorporating some of these into the interior design in the hospital, drawing the eye, pulling you into the department, and making the link with the coast.

The more I have explored the Essex coast the more I have come to think of the Outpatients department in coastal terms. The department borders the sweeping curve of the new atrium, with four entrances off the atrium. I imagine the atrium as the sea, and if the water floors inland, through the entrances and up the ‘creeks’ of the department, then a network of rivers (corridors) and inlets (waiting areas) emerges.

I am working on the idea of creating a continuous panorama of the coast, from Harwich to Southend, using video. The land around here is pretty flat, so landmarks can be seen for miles around, whether it is Bradwell powerstation just south of here, or the tower at Walton-on-the-Naze to the north. You could go down the whole coast following sightlines, jumping from one landmark to the next. Then I popped my head up above the tufts of grass on the sand dunes and was greeted by this! Bright yellow columns rising up out of the River Colne. Oil platform, or just Public Sculpture No.3 for today?

Above the mud the whole beach seems to be made up of shells, and some really large ones too.

There is something endlessly fascinating to me about wrecks. They are like a full stop, the end of a story, but one that then slowly fades from the page to leave the paper blank again. You have to read coasts while they are still in print. Well, this bit of beach that I am standing on now certainly wasn’t here a few hundred years ago. I spotted a row of houses about a mile inland called ‘The Old Coastguard Cottages’.

Now this I didn’t expect! The second ‘public sculpture’ of the day. It is interesting how coast really seem to accumulate ‘drift’ material from both sides: from the sea driftwood and other bits and pieces get washed up; from the land side things that we don’t quite know where to put, that don’t quite fit into normal life, get placed here. Coasts accumulate odd collections of things. That is certainly part of their attraction for me.