GreenChoices

The Former Coastguard's Tower in Hunstanton

A new centre for Climate Change awareness

The former Coastguard's Tower stands on the cliffs on the Norfolk Coast. For seventy years the Norfolk Coastguard has scanned the horizon for danger, scanned the sky while considering the weather reports, and watched the ships passing by far out to sea. But a few years ago the coastguard moved out, and now the building watches alone. It watches the long East Anglian coastline in both directions, seeing it sometimes full of tourists in the summer months, sometimes in winter only inhabited by a lone walker muffled up against the weather. It watches the changing temper of the sea and the endless Norfolk sky. And, one imagines, it becomes aware of the cliff-edge, which is not so far away, and surely it becomes aware that the cliff-edge is slowly moving inland, towards it, inch by inch, month by month. A recent survey gave the Coastguard's Lookout a life-span of up to 50 years before the cliff is eroded away under its feet. Another fifty years and it will be in the sea.

Where we will all be when the Lookout falls? Add on fifty years to your own age, that of your friends, your partner, your children.

Where will our planet be when the Lookout falls? What will be our lifestyles? It is becoming clear that the effects of our inhabitation of this planet, in particular of our seemingly boundless habits of consumption, will cause serious environmental changes over the next fifty years. Some say it is already too late to prevent certain changes, either they are already here or they have become inevitable. But other changes we can still do something about provided we get the message out quickly to the widest audience possible. This is what this project is about.

Coastguards for the Future

We plan to purchase the Coastguard's Lookout and to convert it into a Centre for Awareness of Climate Change.

The limited life-span left to the building and the threat it is under from the approaching cliff-edge has parallels with the threat from environmental change that is approaching us all. We will all, either voluntarily or by force of changes already in motion, have to alter our modes of living over these next fifty years in order to create a viable and sustainable future for our communities and for our children.

The 'Coastguards Lookout Centre' will, through the building and through the way it will be converted, tell the story of the approaching cliff-edge. It will make people aware of the approaching fate of the building, and the fact that the building cannot escape its fall. It cannot run away. The message will be that as inhabitants of the world we are, metaphorically speaking, in a somewhat similar position to this building, but we can still do something about our own approaching "cliff-edge".

The centre will be open to the public. You walk to it along the cliffs, you enter the building and then climb up to the Lookout Post on the top. From there you can experience the breath-taking views out to sea, along the coast, and of the sky. But look downwards to the ground and you will see the distance marked out on the ground between the building and the cliff- edge, in metres, in feet, and in years. You will become away of how this time-scale stands in relation to your own life-span. Visit the Centre a second time, perhaps a year later, perhaps three years later, and you will see the change in the distance to the cliff-edge. It will be made clear to you how many feet of cliff have crumbled into the sea in the meantime, while you were not watching.

The erosion of the cliffs happens slowly, incrementally, and thus it happens in such a way that we are not immediately aware of it. It happens, so to speak, in another time-frame to that of our fast-moving, short-termist daily human awareness. Climate changes also happen gradually, and it is too easy for us not to take them seriously, even for us to leave any reaction until it is too late. This is the message of the Coastguards Lookout Centre. The Centre will be a tool to bring these small incremental changes to people's attention, through its creation of a heightened awareness of one particular change, that of the erosion of the boundary of our inhabited island. A boundary which, at other poiints on the coastline, is also threatened by the very real potential for rises in sea level in the foreseeable future.

The Centre will be a lookout to the sea and to the sky, but also into the next fifty years. Perhaps we all need to have the experience of being Coastguards for the Planet, watching for the approaching storms in our future.

The Project Plan

The Lookout is located a short walk along the cliffs from the Norfolk coastal town of Hunstanton. The Coastguards Lookout Centre will be an easily accessible building, hopefully (if the finances allow it) without an entrance fee, and with no large exhibition inside. Instead it will offer the experience of the climb up to the Lookout on top, the experience of the immense view of the sea and the sky, and the experience of the story of the approaching fall of the building. The Centre will be open to everyone, to tourists, to locals and to passers-by. It will be a generator of a heightened awareness, reaching those who perhaps would not, in the course of their normal daily or holiday routine, come into contact with the green agenda. It will offer something for everyone, an experience. We hope that even those who are not yet open to the environmental message will become aware, through the building's story, of the speed these environmental changes can approach at, and the fact that that these changes will happen within our lifetime.

The building will act as a tool for documentation of the small incremental changes which add up to a big fall. It will be, in its approaching demise, a warning sign. It stands on the edge of the coastline, on the very boundary between our inhabited land and the sea. Over the next fifty years the building will be transferred from the one to the other, from land to sea, from territory we have always considered "ours" to the space of nature.

We hope that by the time the building falls that we have created a much more generous relationship with nature, with our planet. We hope that by then will not be simply consumers but also providers for the planet. The Coastguard's Lookout can then, with its fall, become a token of our readiness to give and not only to take from this world.

Can you Help?

This is a small but potentially very powerful building which has the potential to reach a wide audience with its message. The message is simple but poetic and could thus travel far. This is a project which could generate much publicity for the green agenda.

We need some help to make the project happen. Can you pass on the message about this project? Do you know someone, a company, an individual, a charity who could help us financially with the purchase and the conversion of the building? Can you help with awareness-raising or fund-raising on this project?

The project is in its early stages, but we have to move fast to purchase the tower before it is sold-off for profit. Any help you can give us would be very welcome, and this includes of course your messages of support which help to motivate us on.

Please contact the project architect:
Sarah Riviere, RIBA, by e-mail at:

rivgo@aol.com