Art attack: Doodle house project draws ire of locals

An artist is facing a backlash from local residents after his plans to build a house on Dungeness beach with metal doodles covering the exterior was revealed.

- ANAHITA HOSSEIN-POUR

Sam Cox, also known as Mr Doodle and originally from Tenterden in Kent, is seeking to replace an existing home with a three-bedroom structure incorporating existing railway carriages and laser-cut metal doodles on the exterior.

But some residents have criticised the proposal as a “vanity project” with no artistic inspiration or “spiritual understanding” of the beach location sometimes referred to as “Britain’s only desert”.

Another likened the plans to the “Disneyfication” of Dungeness, adding: “Yes, there is a tradition of artists making their mark on the beach, personalising their homes with flotsam and jetsam, as part of an organic process that comes of this landscape, of its haphazard growth and rusting past.

“The proposal, in contrast, is an explicit, very public statement of the artist’s aesthetic which has no connection to place.”