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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2005

  • Work on this object began.

2007

  • Work on this object ended.

2015

2024

  • You found it!

East Beach Café

This is a East Beach Café. It was designed by Heatherwick Studio and Thomas Heatherwick and made for (as the client) Brownfield Catering. It is dated 2005–2007. Its medium is welded steel, glass, insulating foam.

How can a seaside building relate to the sea?
In Littlehampton —a seaside town in Sussex— the studio designed a café to replace a fast-food snack kiosk. Sited on a narrow, beach-facing strip, the building needed to be solid against the elements and transparent to the incredible view. Undulating steel ribbons form the roof and walls. Front shutters roll back to vanish into the structure, whose weathered metal has the raw character of objects washed up on the shore. Fabricated by the local steelwork company that made Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge, the success of the café has contributed to the town’s revitalization.

It is credited Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.

  • Artists' Studios
  • crinkled sheet steel, wood, glass, insulating foam.
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.21
  • Pavilion
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.03
  • Gazebo
  • stacked birch plywood.
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.05

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio.

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<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/85006437/ |title=East Beach Café |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=19 April 2024 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>