No this is not a giant piece of chocolate melting on a pavement. It’s the new sea-side café building that Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to build in Littlehampton. The traditional little town on England’s south coast was looking to replace a seafront kiosk with a structure that could stand its own against the nasty weather and vandals. Although I really have no words to describe the structure apart from calling it a cave formed by the movement of molten lava perhaps, I can safely tell you that the structure stands with the sea on one side and a parade of houses on the other.
The vision of the studio visualized the building as a long, thin structure without flat, two-dimensional facades and thus they created the building by slicing it diagonally into ribbons which wrap up and over the top forming a protective shell of sorts. The building is open to the sea in front with the opening filled with glass doors and windows which are protected by roller shutters at night that are cleverly concealed within the shell. intentionally given a raw and weathered look that stands in contrast to the white-washed structures of the seaside, with its The building’s steel shell has been finished in an oil-based coating that lets a rust-like patination develop on it which is not harmful to the structure’s strength. The building serves as a kiosk in the day and as a trendy café seating sixty in the evenings.
Source: Heatherwick