The Searooms

We have been working as the architects for Kelly’s Hotel for the past two years.

The brief for this project was to design and build a new stand-alone restaurant in the hotel grounds. A new place to dine and relax. Set into the existing landscape of the dune gardens, the restaurant, entitled ‘The Sea Rooms’, opens out to both the garden and sea view.

The design consists of two volumes set on top of each other at different angles to make the most of each of the vistas they address. The lower volume is set into the existing sand dunes with ancillary spaces set back in to the rear and the front opening fully to a lower terrace and garden.

Linked by a double height internal stairs, the upper volume is a narrow glass box that sits in the upper garden facing the sea. The space is divided from front to back with a chimney breast which grounds the room, forms a focal point and reveals the sea view rather than a full vista as you come up the stairs.

The roof the of the lower volume forms a bridge linking the outdoor upper terrace to the rest of the garden running past the glass of the double height stair volume inside. Corten planters run the whole way along holding grasses that soften and punctuate the railings.

The burnt shou sugi ban cladding is taken from the sea blackened timber of the maritime pines that frame the views on both sides of the garden. The glazed facade is darkened for sunglare but also reflects back the garden so that it sits lightly into the landscape around it. The interior is a simple palette of terracotta tiles that flow from inside to out , rough plaster throughout and a polished concrete floor softened by an acoustic timber roof upstairs.