Dezeen Magazine

Thomas Heatherwick cafe update

The website of East Beach Cafe has some new snowy pictures of the nearly complete beach-front structure designed by Thomas Heatherwick.

Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe
Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe

The cafe, at Littlehampton on the south coast of England, is due to open next month.

Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe
Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe

See our earlier story on this project here.

Here is a description of the project from Heatherwick's website:

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Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to design a café building to replace a seafront kiosk in Littlehampton, a traditional seaside town on England's south coast. Exposed to weather and vandalism, the narrow site sits between the sea and a parade of houses. The studio saw its challenge as being to produce a long, thin building without flat, two-dimensional façades.

The building is sliced diagonally into ribbons which wrap up and over the building, forming a layered protective shell, open to the sea in front. The opening is filled with glass doors and windows, protected at night by roller shutters concealed within the building's geometry, the 30-centimetre width of the ribbons being the dimension of a shutter mechanism.

In contrast to the conventional white-washed seaside aesthetic, the building is raw and weathered, its structural steel shell finished with an oil-based coating that permits a rust-like patination to develop without affecting structural performance.

A kiosk and cafeteria by day and a restaurant in the evening, the new café seats sixty.