14 MODERN TEA HOUSE DESIGNS

The Art of Tranquillity: 14 Modern Tea House Designs
By Steph, Web Urbanist, 4 November 2013.

In Asia, tea houses are typically striking examples of traditional architecture, reflecting the culture and history of the nations in which they’re built. But many architects are re-imagining this concept of a private, tranquil space dedicated to sacred or meditative activities through the lens of modern design. These 14 tea house designs include floating glass structures inspired by lanterns, temporary flat-pack huts and digitally designed shelters.

1. Glass Tea Houses in the Woods

A trio of minimalist glass cubes serve as tea houses, meditation and brainstorming getaways in the wooded backyard of a home in Silicon Valley. “Each tea house is designed as a transparent steel and glass pavilion, hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape,” says architecture firm Swatt Miers. “Cast-in-place concrete core elements anchor the pavilions, supporting steel channel rim joists which cantilever beyond the cores to support the floor and roof panes. With its minimal footprint, the design treads lightly on the land, minimizing grading and preserving the delicate root systems of the native oaks.”

2. Fujimori Tea House on Stilts

Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori has a little fun with traditional tea house designs by placing them high on stilts, stringing them between posts or otherwise removing them from any sense of being grounded. This one is precariously perched on just two narrow trunks in Nagano Prefecture, and is accessible by a rather intimidating freestanding ladder. Fujimori intentionally pushes the limits of tea house architecture, making it a bit of a challenge to access them, but rewarding once inside.

3. Paper Tea House by Shigeru Ban

Architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for making unexpected things out of paper and cardboard - like bridges and even churches. The Paper Tea House was created as part of a sale of Japanese art and design, constructed of square paper tubes with an indoor space measuring just over 5 meters long.

4. Floating Glass Tea House

This tea house floats over the landscape, a glass and bronze rectangle suspended from a frame in the image of a Japanese lantern. The backyard structure, by David Jameson, is also used as a meditation space and a stage for the family’s musical recitals.

5. Modern Tea House and Meditation Hut

This private tea house is elevated on the edge of a peaceful lake in Illinois on the property of architect Jeffery Poss. The vaulted roof reflects the dappled light from the surface of the pond onto the interior ceiling, and also pours rainwater into the pond. A low horizontal window frames a view of the water.

6. Sculptural Tea House in Prague

Sculptor Vojtech Bilisic teamed up with architect David Mastalka to create this unusual modern tea house in Prague, Czech Republic. It’s open to the woods on one side and features a domed roof laminated with paper to filter the light coming in from above.

7, 8 & 9. Three Designs from Digital Tea House Workshop

Rethinking the process by which tea houses are conventionally designed, students from Columbia University and The University of Tokyo came together to draft and build three modular “Digital Tea Houses.” Created as part of a summer fabrication workshop, the houses seek to capture the tranquil feel of a traditional structure using digital design techniques.

10. Tea House on a Concrete Bunker

An original concrete bunker that was originally part of a water management system protecting the land in case of attack is now the basis of a striking tea house. The concrete 1936 bunker has been covered with a steel structure that slides onto it like a sleeve, protecting the original historic structure while significantly altering its appearance.

11. Bright Red Bridge Tea House

The bold Bridge Tea House by Fernando Romero looks as unlike a traditional Japanese tea house as it possibly could. A real, functional tea house, the twisting truss spans a pond at the JinHua Architecture Park in China. “Our concept is based on two fundamental elements in the typological conformation of Chinese gardens: the bridge and the tea house. Since our site was next to a water pond, we wanted to unify both those typologies into one single structure.”

12. Flat-Pack Minimalist White Tea House

Artist Kengo Kuma created the ‘Oribe Tea House’ as an homage to the 16th century tea ceremony master Furuta Oribe. Stark white and ribbed, the tea house feels minimalist and skeletal. It’s mobile and temporary, made of corrugated plastic boards fixed together with bands. The whole thing packs flat for easy transport.

13. Floating Open Bamboo Courtyard Tea House

This open bamboo framework is a tea house that actually floats on a lake in the Shiqiao Garden northwest of Shanghai. Bamboo Courtyard Teahouse by Architect Sun Wei is a contemporary take on both tea house architecture and bamboo, both traditional aspects of Chinese culture.

14. Flying Mud Boat by Terunobu Fujimori

Another absurdist tea house design by Terunobu Fujimori looks like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki film, a ‘Flying Mud Boat’ suspended between two poles. Inspired by organic shapes and materials, it looks like it could be some kind of pod that fell out of a massive tree. While it’s a bit silly and humorous looking, Fujimori intends to make a serious statement with it: suspending structures with cables could be a realistic solution for earthquake- and flood-proof architecture in Japan.

[Source: Web Urbanist. Edited.]