AO Architects Turns Riyadh Parking Lot Into Scaffolding Café

A grid of red construction scaffolding stretches across BAG Café in Riyadh — and AO Architects have no intention of taking it down. The firm built the canopy over a former parking yard and carried the same grid through the café's interior ceiling, turning the equipment that normally signals unfinished work into the finished design.

The project sits on a site designed, until now, only for cars. AO Architects took a parking yard and made it a place where customers stay rather than leave their vehicle. The existing structure was rehabilitated, the kitchen and service areas were rebuilt, and the drive-thru lane remained in use throughout.

Why keep the scaffolding?

Scaffolding is normally temporary — a promise that something else is coming. At BAG, it becomes the thing people came to see. The architects describe the project as using a temporary construction system to create a lasting presence.

The red finish is not a decorative choice. The scaffolding's standard industrial color already matched BAG's brand identity, so the architects used it without repainting. Branding and architecture arrive as one object: the café needs no oversized logo in photographs because its structure announces it, while still reading as structure rather than prop.

Over the gravel-covered yard, woven cloth associated with traditional goat-hair tents stretches across the red frame. The fabric provides shade and softens the hard geometry. The pairing joins two very different ways of making shelter — one tied to contemporary construction, the other to a regional tradition of portable tents.

What materials run through the interior?

Inside, corrugated galvanized steel runs from the exterior into the café unpainted, and concrete floors keep the palette plain. The architects show no interest in making exposed materials perform luxury. The metal is metal. The scaffolding stays visible. Neither gets a decorative apology.

BAG distinguishes itself from meticulously styled coffee shops that blur together by offering a place visitors recognize at a glance. The red grid carries one visual language from the outdoor seating to the interior, so the café reads as a single coherent space.

What does the project keep from the old site?

The design does not erase the site's earlier purpose. Cars still pass through the drive-thru; people can now also choose to sit outside under a canopy that makes the setting feel intentional rather than like a few tables beside the curb. The strategy has a clear sense of proportion: change the parts that need changing, keep the parts that still work, and give the former parking yard a better life as outdoor space.

The strongest move may be the restraint. BAG trusts the arrangement of ordinary things — a red frame, a gravel yard, a length of fabric, a sheet of metal — to be memorable without a fresh skin or a blank slate. For a city full of interchangeable cafés, that is the idea with the longest shelf life: a place can change its job without hiding how it got there.

Designer: AO Architects

Location: Riyadh