Like a bridge linking these two extraordinary natural landscapes, the café designed by SelgasCano is summarised in three staggered glass rectangles, positioned parallel to the coast, creating a close connection with both the forest behind and the sea horizon. The entire program is simply organised on three different floors separated by a 70 cm difference in level between each.
Raising the building 6 meters above tide level, the terrace offers unobstructed views of the surroundings, while inside, the side sliding doors generously open the space to the sea breeze. The "Chiringuito," named after the beach spots that dominate the Spanish coast, disappears from the seaside, visually connecting the shore with the pine forest in the background.
"Chiringuito Café" by SelgasCano. Photograph by Iwan Baan.
"Chiringuito Café" by SelgasCano. Photograph by Iwan Baan.
Project description by SelgasCano
After the success of the “Coffee and Tree” Café among the people of Rizhao, our client was offered to build a new cafeteria in a very special and very beautiful location, on the edge between a Black Pine Forest and the Beach of Rizhao. A completely natural and unique location, but where different and messy buildings had been built over the years without any order. The brief included cleaning up all this mess and creating a new Cafeteria as a bridge between these two natural landscapes.
That´s why we always thought of the building as something very transparent, and it ended up consisting of three stepped glass rectangles joined together and oriented parallel to the sea shoreline. So, from every point in the interior of the building, and from its upper terraces, you could see perfectly the sea, but also you had a clear view through it of the pine forest in the back. These three clean geometries organise the cafeteria very simply, distributing the whole program at three different levels with a step of 70cm between each of them and raising them from the sand level at 6 meters above the tide level.
You can open the sliding doors to the sides to create a totally open space to the beach with the smell of the sea.
The terrace level gets the most astonishing views, with the building section measuring just 6.80m above the ground level.
The interior ceiling is a continuity of the outdoor sun protections that are in both cases made of recycled aluminium tubes painted in 5 different colors and that gives the color and sea personality to the whole building.
We always called it “Chiringuito” in remembrance of all these places that are next to the beach all around the coast in Spain, but the client preferred to call it the “Coffee and Sea” as a continuation of different Cafes related to nature that they had planned to build.
From the seaside, the building disappears. It remains visible only through the reflections of the landscape on the glass walls and allowing a glimpse of the pine forest that mixes with the guests of the cafeteria, the real actors in this clear space.
