Elephant Rock Café

Designed in 1989, the café replaced a popular landmark: Kerry’s Café, a narrow ground-level tuckshop-style wing flanking a courtyard and projecting towards the beach from an old house on stumps. The new owners, fresh from post-university years in Japan wanted a place to display pottery and a place to make tofu in an “ethical” take-away and sit-down establishment. Minimal car parking meant the old courtyard area was the limit of GFA for a new elevated deck that could connect to a raised house. Open to the beach the deck was designed as both an indoor and outdoor space (thus the chamferboard linings) and shielded from the south-easterlies by louvred shutters. A curved dining edge gave diners opportunity to converse with take away patrons at ground level. Twenty eight years later the café remains a popular community meeting place. AIA State Commendation 1991 Regional Award Winner 1990.