There is a quiet philosophy behind every WatchHouse opening: no two Houses should ever be the same. It sounds like branding until you step inside the coffee house’s newest outpost at the Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club, formerly the Jockey Club, and realise the idea is closer to an ethic of listening than a design formula. As Deidra Hodgson, the designer behind the project, puts it, “the idea of no two Houses being the same is about allowing each location to have its own character rather than applying a fixed visual language.” Here, that character comes from the ground up: from Spanish influenced stable architecture, from saddlery, from gardens that have watched decades of riders pass through them.
Rather than lean on the obvious iconography of equestrian life, Hodgson’s studio went looking for its quieter grammar. “We looked at stable architecture, Spanish arches, traditional methods of shading and the craftsmanship of saddlery, and tried to distil those references rather than reproduce them directly,” she explains. The result surfaces gradually: arched openings, tiled surfaces, joinery that nods to saddle making without ever announcing itself.
Materiality carries much of that intention. Hand glazed terracotta tiles and stone flooring were chosen for tactility over spectacle, “to feel tactile and honest,” in Hodgson’s words, allowing the space to “gain its own story and patina over time” despite being newly built. The planning, too, resists a single tempo. Bar seating invites a quick espresso and conversation with the barista; communal banquettes hold longer gatherings; the garden dissolves the boundary between inside and out as light shifts through the day.
Asked what she is quietest proud of, Hodgson returns to those handmade wall tiles, whose subtle variation in colour and glaze means the room is never lit the same way twice. “It brings a sense of tactility, craftsmanship and movement to the space,” she says, “and reveals something slightly different as the day progresses.” It is a fitting metaphor for the House itself: consistent in spirit, endlessly local in expression.
