Adnams Café

When Adnams brewery relocated its distribution depot out of the centre of Southwold, it freed up a significant site in the town for redevelopment. Ash Sakula won the invited competition and was appointed architect for a two-phase project to create a shop and cafe for the brewery, followed by a development of mixed-tenure housing known as Tibby's Triangle.

Our design opened up the site and re-connected it with the rest of the town, creating a convivial, sustainable mixed-use development. The completed scheme is cited by Historic England as an exemplar for the constructive conservation of a small coastal town, boosting commercial and leisure activity both within the scheme and beyond.

We designed Adnams Store and Cafe to be a place of real and genuine community, that drew on the historic and social cues of the town and the historic Adnams Brewery previously on the site. It becomes a social hub for the area, knitting the new housing development into the old town seamlessly. It becomes a real market square, where neighbours gather to catch up or enjoy a coffee in the quick, brisk air of a sunny, beachy morning.