East Beach Cafe

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 whitewashed seaside aesthetic, the building is raw and weathered, its structural steel shell finished with an oilbased coating that permits a rustlike patination to develop without affecting structural performance. With a strongly organic undulating form, it was designed to look like something washed up with the flotsam and jetsam on the shore. The interior is simply designed with curved wooden walls reflecting the external waves.

East Beach Cafe was commissioned by a mother and daughter team, Jane Wood and Sophie Murray. Residents of Littlehampton, both Jane and Sophie are equally passionate about good food and great design. When the opportunity arose to buy the beachfront site with permission for a business, they realized that they could provide something special for the town that would protect the undeveloped seafront and provide a destination restaurant within an iconic building - and the idea of East Beach Cafe was born. Like any good seaside restaurant, East Beach Cafe is completely family friendly and relaxed, as appealing to small children in flip flops carrying buckets and spades, as to urbanites enjoying a weekend by the sea. A kiosk and cafeteria by day and a restaurant in the evening, the new café seats sixty.