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Bettesworth Construction
adaptive reuse

Bag Café / AO Architects: A Riyadh Café Built Around a Reusable Scaffolding Canopy

AO Architects retained a former restaurant and drive-through for Bag Café in Riyadh, using red scaffolding and woven tent fabric to connect its outdoor seating and interior.

By Bettesworth Construction Team 3 min read
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Bag Café is a 560 m² renovation in Al Muhammadiyah, Riyadh, by AO Architects, completed in 2026. Rather than replace the former restaurant site, the project retained its building and drive-through, converted the old parking yard into outdoor seating, and linked the two with a red scaffolding canopy wrapped in woven tent fabric.

Project overview

ArchDaily’s project page, published October 8, 2026, identifies the café as Bag Café, also styled BAG, and attributes its description to the architects. The site is in Al Muhammadiyah, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; no street address is provided. Ahmad Frehat and Ouda Alouda led the architecture, with Abdulmajeed Alharbi on the design team. SHEED was the general contractor, and Dua Photography Studio provided the photography. ArchDaily: Bag Café / AO Architects

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How the renovation reused the site

The leased property previously contained a restaurant, drive-through lane, and parking yard. The client asked the design team to retain the existing structure and prepare the café for the winter season. The team rehabilitated the building, rebuilt the kitchen and services, and kept the drive-through. The former parking yard was filled with gravel and repurposed as the main outdoor café area.

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This approach makes the project’s main construction move a reorganization of the site, rather than a wholesale replacement: the existing building and vehicle route remain, while the yard becomes a place to sit.

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A canopy that connects outside and in

A red scaffolding grid extends across the former parking yard and continues into the café as part of the ceiling. Woven tent fabric is stretched and wrapped around the scaffold tubes, forming a sequence of tented spans. According to the project description, the scaffold’s standard industrial finish already matched the café’s red branding, so it was used without modification.

Outside, lighting integrated into the scaffold tubes illuminates the fabric from below. Inside, the canopy’s red framework carries the same visual language into the exposed ceiling, making the transition between courtyard and interior legible as one continuous design.

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Materials, entrance, and route through the café

The existing volume is clad in unpainted corrugated galvanized sheet, with its mill finish continuing from the exterior to the interior. A cast concrete floor with zero-size aggregate runs through the space. Inside, an oxide-red terrazzo counter and built-in timber benches sit beneath the exposed ceiling.

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The entrance is marked by the Arabic wordmark باق on a raw canvas panel. From the street, the route passes into a courtyard and rises with the site’s natural change in level. At the threshold, it meets the main bar, then opens toward the interior seating and courtyard.

What the project says about demountable construction

The architects’ description characterizes the canopy as entirely dry-assembled, demountable, and reusable, with no components cast in place. It says the canopy was designed for the lifespan of a season, yet remained as a recognizable reference in its surroundings. The architects summarize the design premise this way: “BAG begins with a contradiction: a temporary construction system used to establish a permanent presence.”

Those statements describe the stated assembly method and design intent. The published project information does not quantify waste reduction, carbon savings, cost savings, structural performance, or the canopy’s measured lifespan, so those outcomes cannot be inferred from the reuse claims alone.

Can you visit Bag Café?

The project page places Bag Café in Al Muhammadiyah, Riyadh, but does not establish its current opening status or provide a street address, hours, menu, or visitor guidance. Check a current venue source before planning a visit.

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