Heatherwick café owners to open chippy

A fish and chips offshoot of Thomas Heatherwick’s East Beach Café is opening next month in west Sussex’s Littlehampton.

Some of the design features within the 45m2 West Beach Café include a façade that opens the venue to the beach bringing the ‘outside within the interior’, and furniture designed specifically for the café made by local crafts people.

The furniture, interior and building has been created by architect and designer Asif Khan, and is his first commission after graduating from London’s The Architectural Association last summer.

The idea behind the café is that it is adaptable to its seaside setting – while its front can be opened to the elements in the summer, it can remain closed in the winter.

‘One of the café’s features is a multi-functional white- and international orange-coloured divider made from fabric which can be woven through 25 sockets in the ground, allowing the outside space to be broken up into a variety of patterns,’ Khan says.

He was appointed by the café’s owners Jane Wood and Sophie Murray after speaking at the Shifting Sands event in Littlehampton in March 2007.

The West Beach Café opens in Littlehampton on 20 July.