Thomas Heatherwick-designed cafe

We’re excited about the opening of this project for many reasons: foremost, it’s summer, and the combination of sea, sand and stunning architecture pleases us greatly; second, we’ve long championed designer-architect Thomas Heatherwick, whose studio is behind the East Beach Café; and lastly, let’s not forget the added bonus of having champagne and welsh rarebit indoors when the elements descend (which they invariably will - it’s the British coast, after all) as opposed to a Mr Whippy, huddled under the leaking canopy of a caravan.

The extraordinary structure is in fact Heatherwick Studio’s first complete building. At just 35, Terence Conran’s protégé has redesigned a public square in Newcastle and the Longchamp flagship in New York but the East Beach Café is without doubt his most ambitious project yet. Shaped like a vast piece of driftwood, washed-up on the shore, the rusted metal shell undulates in sections, like rings of wood that have been smoothed by the sea. The scale and material of the structure combined with its unique shape and setting, makes for an extraordinary contrast of organic and industrial, natural and manmade.

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The interior has been designed by Alan Clayton, responsible for another bastion of British seaside chic, Cornwall’s Fifteen Restaurant. Simply designed with curved wooden furniture and spacious seating for sixty, the priority has been to keep the focus on the seaside view. The menu adds a finishing touch to the concept, offering nostalgic British food, made with quality, local ingredients: fish and chips, kedgeree, potted shrimps, steamed cockles and crumpets. Beats a soggy hot dog any day.

20 June 2007 | Architecture