Project Overview
The brief calls for a surf club that is extraverted, social, and open to the public: a building where the line between interior and exterior is deliberately blurred, where the beach comes inside and the music reaches the water. This is architecture for pleasure, and it takes that brief as seriously as any civic commission. The building must work at multiple speeds — the slow time of a morning coffee watching the dawn surf, and the fast time of a Saturday evening when the DJ is playing and the terrace is full.
Design Philosophy
The building is conceived as a threshold: a covered zone between land and sea, between the city behind and the beach in front, between public life and the private ritual of the surf. It is not a wall that separates these conditions but a device that mediates between them — a building you pass through rather than arrive at.
The formal strategy is a deep covered deck elevated above the beach on slender steel columns, with the full programme of the club — bar, kitchen, changing rooms, surf hire, DJ booth, and administration — arranged along its inland edge, leaving the entire seaward face open to the sea breeze, the sound of the waves, and the view of the surf. The deck is the primary public space: 50 m long and 10 m deep, it accommodates standing crowds, cafe tables, sunbeds, and dancing simultaneously.
Technical Specifications
Structure: Hot-dip galvanized steel frame throughout, designed for a coastal salt-spray environment. Primary columns are circular hollow sections (219 mm diameter) at 5 m centres, driven directly into the beach at low tide. The deck structure is a steel grillage of I-beams at 1.5 m centres, topped with iroko hardwood decking (25 mm boards with 5 mm open joints for drainage and sand clearance).
Roof: A folded steel plate roof (3 mm corten, pre-weathered) shelters the inland zone while leaving the seaward third of the deck open to the sky. The fold of the roof creates a high clerestory on the inland face that illuminates the interior of the service zone with indirect north light, while the low edge of the roof at the seaward side frames the horizon in a wide panoramic slot.
Enclosure: The service zone (bar, kitchen, changing rooms) is enclosed in a skin of perforated corten steel panels that allow air circulation while providing privacy for the changing facilities. Openings in the corten skin are generous where the programme demands visibility (bar frontage, surf hire window) and minimal where it demands privacy (showers, toilets).
Sound: The DJ booth is positioned at the east end of the deck, elevated 600 mm above deck level on a low platform, with direct sightlines the full length of the building. A distributed speaker system of weatherproof marine-grade drivers is integrated into the roof structure, providing even sound coverage across the deck without the need for large speaker stacks that would interrupt the view.
Blueprint & Floor Plan Notes
The plan is linear: 50 m along the beach frontage, 14 m deep (10 m deck + 4 m service zone). Reading from west to east: surf hire and equipment store (ground level, beneath the deck) → main changing rooms and showers → kitchen and servery → bar with full-length counter facing the deck → DJ booth and event space at the east end. The administration office and first aid room are on a mezzanine above the kitchen, accessible by an external steel stair.
A second stair at the west end of the deck descends to the beach, wide enough for people carrying boards and wetsuits. The underside of the deck (between the columns) is a sheltered zone used for board racks, outdoor showers, and informal seating in wet weather — a continuation of the building’s programme into the beach itself.
The section reveals the key spatial relationship: the high ceiling of the deck (5.4 m clear) contrasted with the compressed service zone (2.7 m), the transition between them marked by the fold of the corten roof. The deck is 1.2 m above beach level, accessed by three wide steps along its full seaward edge — steps that double as informal seating for watching the surf.
SPANTONE 