The Chiringuito Café in Rizhao by SelgasCano embodies an architecture of lightness, playfulness and technical finesse, where three elongated glass capsules float parallel to the shoreline like inhabitable sweets or vibrant beach modules, framed by bold yellow curves that stage the coastal landscape and dissolve the boundary between inside and out through fully retractable sliding walls that invite the marine breeze and visual continuity, transforming the interior into an atmospheric extension of the beach itself; the staggered composition —each volume elevated 70 centimetres above the previous— culminates in a terrace at 6.8 metres high, creating a sectional choreography that structures the programme while responding to the terrain and tree canopy, blending the building into its environment and asserting architecture as a porous threshold, not an object, where transparency becomes both material and strategy; the use of recycled aluminium painted in five colours, curved glass, pale wood and relaxed, eclectic furniture infuses the pavilion with a retro-futurist aesthetic, evoking 1960s pop architecture and pneumatic experiments, not as pastiche but as critical reinvention, offering a vision of public space that is generous, joyful and environmentally attuned; by night, the café glows like a soft lantern, casting a golden aura that accentuates its civic role as a place of gathering and contemplation, suggesting that elegance can emerge from simplicity, and that colour, light and structure are tools not only of design but of cultural affirmation, positioning SelgasCano’s work as a form of resistance through delight, where ephemeral beauty and material intelligence coalesce into a quietly radical spatial proposal.
