Structural columns disguised as huge, craggy boulders dominate the interior of this cafe designed by BLUE Architecture Studio in the Chinese seaside resort of Aranya.
The Zolaism cafe is situated in a coastal area in the city of Qinhuangdao known as the Aranya Gold Coast, just a few hours drive from Beijing.
The Zolaism cafe features boulder-like columns
The coffee shop has a flat, white-painted roof and glass walls that run through and around its four boulder-like columns.
Fabricated from glass-reinforced concrete (GRC), the columns were introduced by BLUE Architecture Studio to make the cafe's interiors appear more like a natural landscape.
The cafe's glass walls run through and around the columns
"In the vast world, humans are a small and lonely entity," explained the Beijing-based practice. "The tranquillity and vastness of nature helps people to escape from the rhythm of urban life and to return to their true selves."
Rather than relying on computer software to plan the form of the columns, the studio designed each one of them by hand.
Increasingly larger models, first made from foam and later from clay, helped the studio to decide how the columns would be shaped and arranged within the cafe.
Glass-reinforced concrete was used to fabricate the columns
Spades and various other tools were used to give the columns their roughly hewn surface finish.
"The whole construction process was full of unknowns and uncertainty," said the studio. "...