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06 Mar 08

Cool Hunting: Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe

Wow, this is interesting... And a great point made by Coolhunting's author(s): that "one can't help but think that this is a woefully under-explored area of building design." Looking at Heatherwick's design, I'd have to agree. The combination of sculpture and flotsam-jetsam washed-ashore appearance is compelling. It's very modern/ new, but also ancient-looking (looks a bit like the spine bones from a giant whale or something)...

www.coolhunting.com/...thomas_heatherw.php - Preview

architecture beach_cafe coolhunting thomas_heatherwick

one look at Thomas Heatherwick's East Beach Cafe and one can't help but think that this is a woefully under-explored area of building design. Surely it's rife with exciting and innovative possibilities, but then that's the British designer's great talent, creating unexpected forms in unexpected places which, on sight, make you reevaluate all your previous preconceptions about a building, sculpture or product. The East Beach Cafe, situated in the small seaside town of Littlehampton, is another hot contender for the Brit Insurance Design Awards. From last week's post about Ma Ke's sculptural fashion to this week's sculptural architecture, the key is that form and function are blended to create something totally unforgettable.
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- For the East Beach Cafe, as with many iconic creative works, it was the happy union of designer and client that helped realize the project. It is often the foresight of a open-minded client that creates great opportunity and in this case it was Littlehampton resident Jane Wood. She bought the site after the old beach cafe closed down and, appalled by the proposal for a new unsightly cafe, she moved to stop it. She said of her impetuous decision, "My house looked out on to East Beach. I felt I had to save this very special place and so I did a crazy thing and bought the business."
- That crazy thing turned into a golden ticket as soon as she commissioned Heatherwick Studio, knowing that only something extraordinary would be created by Thomas and his team. The risk paid off with Jane and her daughter Sophie now doing a roaring trade for queues of people who have that very British predilection of visiting the seaside in all weathers. The transformative effect of great architecture (otherwise known as the "Bilbao effect") is taking hold in Littlehampton, where the masses are making the pilgrimage to eat fish and chips in the extraordinary East Beach Cafe.
  - - the Bilbao effect without spending a Bilbao fortune... fascinating! - on 2008-03-06
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