The Mesh That Holds You

A cafe in Shanghai wraps its customers in white mesh strips that shift as you move through them. Not a wall, not a window, but something in between: a tunnel designed to make you feel held.

This is % Arabica Shanghai EXPO World, a 179-square-metre space completed in 2025 by Vietnam-based Nguyen Khai Architects & Associates. The design firm describes their approach simply:

To achieve the effect of a tunnel that brings safe and cozy feelings for every person stepping in.

Nguyen Khai Architects & Associates

Safe. Cozy. Not words you expect from commercial architecture in a city of 26 million people.

What Sofia Knows About Needing Refuge

Sofia's central districts have changed faster than most residents can track. The stretch between NDK and Vitosha Boulevard, once a mix of quiet courtyards and slow-paced shops, now pulses with construction noise, delivery scooters, and the particular exhaustion of a city trying to become something else.

Where do you go when the city is too loud?

Some cafes answer this question by accident. Others, like Blue Bag Specialty Coffee, answer it by design: small-batch roasting, verified farms, spaces where the ritual of making coffee is visible and valued. The philosophy is the same as what NKAA built in Shanghai: that how we experience something matters as much as what we're experiencing.

The Philosophy of Intentional Enclosure

The mesh tunnel at % Arabica Shanghai EXPO World is not a gimmick. It's a deliberate design language.

Lead architect Nguyen Quang Khai and his team created white-painted mesh strips that constantly change in size and shape. The effect is psychological before it's visual. You're not walking into a cafe; you're walking into a space that was designed with your nervous system in mind.

This differs from the dominant cafe design trend of the past decade, which prioritised openness, natural light, and Instagram-ready angles. Those spaces are designed to be photographed. The mesh tunnel is designed to be inhabited.

The distinction matters. A space optimised for photography asks you to perform. A space optimised for presence asks you to arrive.

Movement Changes What You See

Here's the technical detail that reveals the care: the mesh tunnel's appearance shifts as customers move through the space.

From outside, the white strips create different visual effects depending on where you stand. From inside, the layered enclosure changes as you walk from entrance to counter to seat. This is not accidental. It's designed to reward attention.

For the exterior views, the white tunnel appears under different effects from the customers' viewpoint when moving around the store.

NKAA

The mesh creates a loosely defined partition between indoor and outdoor seating while preserving visual connections across the entire space. You're separated but not isolated. Enclosed but not trapped.

Three Layers, Two Entrances, One Curved Bench

The interior is organised symmetrically through three primary layers: furniture, the tunnel structure, and greenery. Two opposing entrances divide the shop between the counter and seating areas.

The two opposite entrance doors conveniently divide the store into two spaces: the counter and the seating area, with a curved waiting bench in the middle as a sign of space transition.

Nguyen Khai Architects & Associates

That curved bench is a small choice that signals care. It's not a straight line directing you forward. It's a curve inviting you to pause.

Checkered planters containing small plants are interspersed among the outdoor seats, creating separation between groups without enclosing them. Focused lighting emphasises the counter, while a hanging Chemex-inspired lamp illuminates the indoor seating area.

Every element contributes to the feeling of the space. Nothing is accidental.

What This Teaches About the Cities We Want

A global brand like % Arabica could have built another glass box. They could have optimised for throughput, for visibility, for the kind of efficiency that treats customers as transactions.

Instead, they invested in refuge.

The question this raises is not about Shanghai. It's about every city where people need a place to pause. What does it mean when a cafe is designed to hold you rather than move you through? What does it reveal about what we value?

Sofia has its own answers to these questions, scattered across neighbourhoods in spaces that understand the difference between a seat and a sanctuary. The mesh tunnel in Shanghai is one version. The quiet corner at a specialty roaster in Oborishte is another.

The architecture is different. The philosophy is the same.