12. De la Warr Pavilion

We visited the De La Warr Pavilion on a sunny summer August day and it was the first time we invited ‘SaLADS Mums’ to join us. The mums came prepared for the train journey with flasks of tea and tupperware full of digestive biscuits. We approached the bright white modernist building from the beach.

It is said that the De La Warr Pavilion in its typology was a pre-cursor to the Southbank – a ‘People’ Palace’ which would provide culture and entertainment to the masses. Designed by architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, the modernist approach was encouraged by the Bexhill’s town council mayor to aspire to this new ‘international style’ that was emerging in the 1930s.

The building used construction modes, materials and techniques that were pioneering at the time. The forms of the building were constructed out of concrete and steel which cantilevering balconies, clean straight lines, and large glazed walls. The swooping concrete staircase particularly impressed us, enclosed in curved glass panes and terrazzo floor treads. The building feels like a permanent ship docked onto the Bexhill landscape – we ate lunch on one of the cantilevering balconies with the sea breeze making it feel like we were on an upper deck of a modernist vessel.