Tinside – Adapting a Heritage Building by the Sea

Tinside’s Grade II listed Lido is one of Plymouth’s most recognisable landmarks. The National Marine Park project provided an opportunity to bring underused parts of the wider complex into meaningful use.

Starting a Conversation with Materials

New materials were needed across the project, and where possible there was an opportunity to think not only about what they were made from, but what they might communicate.

For example, the bar top in the event space is made from Smile Plastics, a material made from recycled plastic waste including yoghurt pots. The fragments remain visible in the finished surface, making its previous life part of its appearance.

Its position was important too. Standing at the bar, the view is directly out across Plymouth Sound. In front of you is a surface made from discarded plastic, including something as ordinary and disposable as a yoghurt pot; beyond it is the marine environment that the National Marine Park was created to celebrate and protect.

That relationship was deliberate. Sustainability can easily become a conversation about figures on a datasheet, recycled content, embodied carbon and percentages. Those things matter, but lasting change also depends on how we think about the things we use, throw away and ultimately leave behind.

The bar doesn’t pretend to solve the much wider problem of plastic waste. Instead, it makes that waste visible and gives people a reason to think and talk about it. Addressing environmental problems requires technical solutions, but it also requires difficult conversations and changes in behaviour. The bar is a small intervention, but the conversation it prompts can be much bigger.

When Heritage and Safety Compete

The roof terrace was reimagined as an accessible public space, open to everyone and looking directly across Plymouth Sound. But opening it up to more people also brought one of the more difficult decisions of the project into focus.

The existing balustrade, with its three horizontal rails, formed part of the familiar architectural language of the Hoe and foreshore and had been part of Tinside for decades. From a conservation point of view, there was every reason to want to keep it.

But there was another side to the conversation. The horizontal rails were easily climbable, and the openings presented a risk to small children. If the terrace was going to become somewhere that everyone could use, including families with young children, could retaining the original balustrade really be justified?

There wasn’t an easy answer. Options were explored to adapt the existing railing or place a separate glazed barrier in front of it, but each came with its own compromises. Ultimately, safety had to take priority.

That didn’t mean forgetting what had been there before. The replacement was designed as a contemporary intervention rather than a replica. Closely spaced vertical fins make the balustrade safer, while their angled profile draws on the geometry of the lower promenade behind. An Accoya timber top rail ties it into the wider terrace and creates a comfortable place to lean, pause and look out across the Sound.

There was no perfect solution. Retaining the existing balustrade had heritage value, but opening the terrace to more people also brought a responsibility to make it safe. The decision to replace it was carefully considered and reflects a wider challenge in working with historic buildings, respecting what is already there, while recognising when they need to adapt to continue being used and enjoyed.

Adapting to the Sea

Plymouth Sound is not only part of Tinside’s appeal; it is also one of the greatest challenges facing the buildings. Salt, moisture, wind and sea spray mean that materials which might perform perfectly well a few miles inland can have a very different life here.

That influenced material choices throughout the project. Accoya was used extensively across the terrace, where it can weather naturally rather than rely on continual decorative refinishing. The coffee pod’s copper roof will similarly develop a patina over time, while Grade 316 stainless steel, galvanised steel and marine-grade coatings were used where corrosion resistance was particularly important. Rather than fighting the effects of the coastal environment, the aim was to choose materials capable of ageing well within it.

The small building immediately beside the pool presented the same question in a much more extreme way. Exposed to Plymouth Sound, it is already vulnerable to flooding from spring tides and wave overtopping. Here, the question wasn’t simply how to stop the sea getting in, but what happens when it does.

Rather than attempting to make the historic building completely flood proof, it was designed to be flood resilient. Removable shutters were designed to help protect the openings, sockets were raised, GRP doors were selected because they won’t swell, rot or rust, finishes can be cleaned following a flood, and drainage and tanking provide further protection.

The design accepts that water may occasionally enter and concentrates instead on limiting the damage and allowing the building to recover quickly. Following a flood, the intention is that it can be cleaned, checked and returned to use rather than requiring significant replacement of finishes and fittings.

Material selection at Tinside was therefore about looking beyond embodied carbon at the point of installation and considering it over the life of the building. A material that lasts for decades can ultimately represent a better carbon choice than a lower-embodied-carbon alternative that needs to be repeatedly maintained or replaced. In an exposed marine environment, and particularly where flooding is expected, resilience and longevity become an important part of that assessment.

At Tinside, climate resilience doesn’t always mean trying to engineer nature away. Sometimes it means understanding the environment, choosing materials that can live with it, and designing for the occasions when nature inevitably wins.

These are very different decisions, but they share the same starting point: understanding the place before deciding on the solution.

Tinside has already been part of Plymouth for nearly a century. The aim is that these interventions help it remain a useful, resilient and much-loved part of the city for many years to come.