DC1 Devonshire Collective - Eastbourne

Refurbishment of a derelict retail unit to form a café and art gallery space

The project brief was to create a café space on the ground floor serving an art gallery at basement level, with welfare facilities and a platform lift providing disabled access to the basement. Throughout the project Hawk worked closely with Eastbourne Homes and the Devonshire Collective to develop a design to ensure their vision was brought to life.

The existing retail unit was in a derelict state. The entire basement was fitted with a tanking system prior to extensive structural alterations including relocation of the staircase position to make the space more usable. A platform lift was installed to provide disabled access to the basement.

The basement walls and ceilings were dry lined and decorated white to provide a ‘blank canvas’ for the display of the various art exhibits. The client required an ‘urban style’ to ground floor café. This was successfully achieved with the use of exposed services run at high level in galvanized conduit, as well as the use of materials such key clamp to form the staircase hand railing set against exposed brickwork walls. We installed a new kitchen servery with wooden worktops and a new black powder coated shopfront.