Hasta La Ideas

Czech studio A1 Architects covered the walls of this cafe in Prague with a tactile mixture of black plaster, coal and pieces of straw, in a modern take on the clay plasters used inside traditional Japanese tea houses (+ slideshow).

A1 Architects converted a nineteenth-century apartment with vaulted ceilings to create the Tea Mountain cafe, reinforcing the concept of a Japanese tea house by filling the space with charred log columns, each with an illuminated gilt section in its middle.

“We’ve already designed three tea houses and we are very much inspired and fascinated by Japanese architecture and its details,” architect Lenka Kremenova told Dezeen.

“We used even pieces of coal to emphasise the blackness so it feels like you want to touch not just look at the plaster,” she added, referring to the walls. “We always search for a certain kind of quality of materials which could be called ‘touchableness’.”

A gold-plated arch divides the tea house into two halves, creating a light side for service and a dark side for sitting down with a drink.

The first is painted in a shade of pale yellow, and accommodates a serving counter and wooden shelves stacked with tea. The opposite side features dark plastered walls and is filled with tables and stools made from ash wood.

“The seating is in the black part because it is supposed to be a more calm and relaxed place with an ambient atmosphere to enjoy drinking the tea,” Kremenova explained.

A row of globe lights are suspended at different levels above the serving counter, while wooden shelving around the edges of the shop are covered with teapots and other tea-related paraphernalia.

The shop sells a range of tea imported from Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan and China.

Photography is by the architects.

Here’s a project description from A1 Architects:

TEA MOUNTAIN, the teashop
a new concept of drinking tea

The shop called Tea Mountain, recently opened in Prague, brings a new experience how to enjoy the tea, next to contemporary style of serving it is also traditional gustation of high quality tea imported from Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan or China. One of the main issues of a1architects and the owners discussion was how to present the tea in its best to wider audience in a delicate yet friendly manner.

Shop interior

Two worlds, two atmospheres… The seating and drinking happens under the dark vault with its calm appearance and just next to it in bright earthy colours one could buy or watch the presentation of tea. The space of two original 19th century vaults is divided by gold-plated arch line situated almost in the centre of the shop.

The black plaster with added pieces of coal and straw creates an ambient atmosphere and it gets out the customer in his first step into another atmosphere out of the busy street. The following part of the shop is rather light to unable one to focus on details of the tea presentation.

The seating at the table in the black part is accompanied with charred columns with inbuilt gilt cavity which serves as a spot light and brings beautiful warm yellow light on the table. The counter and display shelves are made out of ash wood with exceptional details like inbuilt limestone tea tray, rope handles or charred cover of the scale, all these small unique pieces could be rather seen in a second glance and await patient visitors. Refined details and simple work of layering are the main features of the Tea Mountain shop design.

Client: Martin Špimr
Authors: A1Architects( MgA. Lenka Křemenová, MgA. David Maštálka)
Project: A1Architects
SUPPLIER: Ateliér Mánes – Jakub Vávra
Noren fabric: Vít Svoboda a Alžběta
Graphics: Toman design
Area: 55 m2
Completion: November 2013
Design: Autumn 2013

The post Straw and plaster-lined cafe by A1 Architects
based on Japanese tea houses appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Swatt Miers have suspended three glass pavilions over the edge of a valley in northern California (+ slideshow).

Located in the grounds of the client’s home, the three Tea Houses were designed to provide quiet, contemplative spaces that are free from the distractions of television, internet, telephone and even music.

The largest of the three pavilions provides a workspace that can also be used for hosting small parties, while the second is for sleeping and the third was conceived as a meditative space for a single person.

Overhanging trees shade the transparent glass walls, which are held in place by horizontal steel joists and vertical concrete cores.

A bathroom bridges the largest of the two rooms and underfloor heating keeps each space warm.

We’ve previously featured a music recital room inspired by a Japanese tea house and a meditation hut with a v-shaped roof.

See all our stories about tea houses »

Photography is by Tim Griffith.

Here’s a project description from Swatt Miers:

The idea for the Tea Houses originated when the client and architect partnered years earlier on the sustainable remodel of the 6,000 square foot main house. During construction the client found respite in a remote location on the site, below a ridge an under a grove of Heritage California Live Oaks. As a high-tech Silicon Valley executive, the desire was to create a place where he could simply retreat into nature.

Years later the vision was realized as three individual Tea Houses. The 270 square foot ‘meditating’ Tea House, nestled under the canopy of the largest oak tree, is a place for individual meditation.

The slightly larger ‘sleeping’ Tea House, approximately 372 square feet, is a space designed for overnight stays. This structure is joined by a sky-lit bathroom ‘bridge’ to the largest Tea House.

At 492 square feet, the ‘visioning’ Tea House is for intimate gatherings and creative thinking. The notion of ‘quiet simplicity’ is a consistent theme throughout – there are to be no phones, internet, televisions or audio systems within the structures.

‘Respect’ and ‘restraint’ are the principles that would guide the construction, and extreme care is taken to minimize impacts to the landscape. The design concept of three separate’ micro’ structures, versus one large structure, enables the project to tread lightly on the land.

And to ensure preservation of the Heritage Oaks’ root systems, the teahouses are literally lifted off the ground, supported by cast-in-plate concrete structural cores. Steel-channel rim joists cantilever beyond the vertical cores to support the floor and roof platforms.

The Tea Houses are passively cooled to eliminate the noise impact from mechanical systems. Steel-framed doors and awning windows provide high/low ventilation.

Natural cooling is further enhanced by shading from strategically located landscaping, including evergreen oaks, bamboo, deciduous maple and gingko trees. Heating is distributed through a quiet and efficient in-floor radiant system.

The sculptural interpretation of a simple tea house has succeeded in a magnificent tribute to the beauty of nature. As the sunlight and shadows move across the hillside the Tea Houses take on different forms- at sunrise the structures disappear into the long shadows; the soft silhouette of the midday sun casts dramatic reflections off the glass; and by evening, the structures glow like lanterns.

Site plan – click above for larger image

Viewed from afar or viewed from within, the Tea Houses are works of art living amongst the trees and grasses of their native California hillside.

Plans and elevation – click above for larger image

The post Tea Houses
by Swatt Miers appeared first on Dezeen.

Visitors to this timber tea house sit beneath a woven rope dome with a gilded skylight and a hanging teapot in the middle.

The building, named Black Teahouse, was designed by Czech studio A1Architects and sits beside a lake and woodland near the city of Česká Lípa.

The teapot is suspended from the ceiling by a knotted length of rope and nestles into a crevice in the floor.

The round walls of the building are coated in clay plaster and integrate three flower vases.

Large doors slide back from both rectangular and arched openings in the walls of the tea house to open it out to a sheltered deck.

The exterior of the larch building has been charred.

A1Architects also recently completed an apartment where a stainless steel net takes the place of a banister – see our earlier story here and see all our stories about A1Architects here.

Another tea house featured on Dezeen in the last month is a music room that hangs like a lantern – click here to see all our stories about tea houses.

Here’s some more text from A1Architects:

Black Teahouse

Place

On the southern edge of garden The Black Teahouse reflects itself in water level of small dark lake.

Large and exceptionally cultivated garden becomes natural part of nearby pine forest and its southern edge defined by S-shaped lake with grassy banks makes beautiful surroundings of the family house. And the Teahouse is just part of this carefully designed scenery.

There is fabulous view of the lake, which could be admired by the host and guests from the teahouse. It is a small place to gather, it is a place for a cup of tea.

Teahouse

The inner space of the teahouse could be adjusted by the sliding doors, so there are more levels of perception of nearby landscape. One could enframe his own preferred view as a painting in the interior.

There is a play of sunbeams in gilded skylight, when the teahouse is closed. The whole interior is crowned with knitted geometry of cone soffit made out of sisal ropes. The hearth is the central point of the room, from which the space flows to large veranda built with larch planks.

The veranda is a unique space for watching the water level and the life beneath. There is another important motif next to the knitted soffit in the interior, it is a rounded wall with clay plaster which integrates three bamboo vases as a reminiscence of famous japanese tokonoma – the niche for flowers and caligraphy.

The Teahouse is carefully designed to become a natural part od the landscape and so the green roof is a fragment of grassy surroundings.
The whole house is covered with charred larch facing.

Authors: Lenka Křemenová, David Maštálka / A1Architects
Place: Czech Republic, Česká Lípa

Carpenter: Vojtěch Bilišič, Slovakia
Interior area: 3,50 m2

Veranda area: 10 m2
Realization: Spring 2011

See also:

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Tea House by David Jameson	Hat Tea House by A1Architects	Tea house by David Maštálka

Takeshi Hayatsu and Kristin Trommler of London studio 6a Architects collaborated with students at Cardiff University to build a timber-framed tea house with wattle and daub panels.

The teahouse measures two by two metres, the size of two tatami mats, and was constructed with simple techniques and locally sourced materials.

The students coppiced hazel wands from the local woodland and wove them into panels before coating in a mixture of soil from the building site opposite and Welsh clay.

More tea houses on Dezeen »

The following is by the architects:

Teahouse

We are fascinated by small structures such as sheds and cabins. These structures take us back to “our childhood reveries of secret hideaways, built of branches and leaves or whatever is to hand; to enter our own private world.” (Cabin Fever. 1993 on the jacket.)*

To explore the magic of small structures, we have built a 1:1 scale teahouse with nine dedicated first and second year architecture students from Cardiff University during two and half weeks of the Vertical Studio programme in May 2011.

Tai-an

The design is based on the sixteenth century Japanese teahouse Tai-an in Myoukian temple, Kyoto. This teahouse is thought to be designed by the Japanese tea master Sen No Rikyu. It is a minimal space, only the size of two tatami mats (approx. 2m x 2m), yet forming a highly articulated and intricate space with a subtle play of light and darkness, richly textured earth wall and bamboo woven ceiling.

We wanted to create something new from this Japanese masterpiece, transforming its physical presence by employing different construction methods from the original; traditional timber frame with wattle and daub and contemporary DIY techniques.

Traditional timber frame

The timber frame walls were made from square section timbers following the original Tai –an configurations, and further divided into series of small square panels. As a result the expression of our teahouse became more dense and robust than the original Tai-an teahouse, which has thin walls and skinny round posts.

The walls were prefabricated off site, as in traditional timber frame buildings, enabling the whole structure to become a ‘flat pack’. The base plate was introduced to spread the load without having to excavate the ground for foundations. The frame is exposed inside and outside and infilled with wattle and daub.

Wattle and daub

Wattle and daub is an earth construction method that has existed since Celtic time in Wales. It is an ancient building technique. Similar forms of construction can be seen all over the world. It was used for infill panels until late eighteenth century in traditional timber frame buildings in Wales. Woven Hazel rods (wattle) are fixed between exposed timbers, and then daubed on both sides with a mixture of soil, clay, dung and chopped straw or hemp. We wanted to work with this old technique, not because of the nostalgia to the past, but to re-engage with the materials and the landscape as a source through the act of building.

DIY

Wattle and daub remains essentially a non-professional skill. It doesn’t require years of training and everyone can do it almost immediately. This was an important aspect of the project. The teahouse was built by the students who were at the very beginning of their architectural careers. It had to be built within a very short time frame. Screw fixing by a cordless drill was favoured over traditional carpentry joints. This unsophisticated workmanship gives a relaxed character to our teahouse, as opposed to the highly sophisticated and intense character of the original Tai-an teahouse.

Collage of available materials

Our teahouse is a collage of available materials. A mixture of sawn, plained, treated and untreated timbers in various sizes were donated from the Western Timber Association. With permission from the Forestry Commissions of Wales, we coppiced hazels with our hands in their forest. Hundreds of hazel rods were cut, collected and brought back to the university. Neil Soils in Cardiff and Wilmot Dixon (contractor working on a construction site opposite to our site) donated soil. Ty-Mawr of Brecon, a lime company promoting sustainable products, donated clay and dung. Tools, screws and nails and corrugated bitumen roofing material were sourced from nearby DIY shops. Assembling and mixing these materials together felt like compacting the contemporary landscape into the teahouse.

The process of building was physical. Loading and unloading heavy sacks of soil, carrying buckets full of mud and dung, mixing them with bare hands and feet. Nigel Gervis of Ty-Mawr gave us a recipe for the daub mix and Ian Daniel of St Fagans National Museum of Wales held a wattle and daub workshop at his Celtic village. All these experts’ knowledge and advice were vital to the project.

The resulting teahouse is an open garden pavilion. The majority of wattle panels are left without daub, allowing air and light to filter through. It invites people to sit and relax for their tea break in the garden.

Takeshi Hayatsu Kristin Trommler

Team

Takeshi Hayatsu Unit leader
Kristin Trommler Unit leader

Anastasija Barkovskaja, Aida Kirikbayeva, Sarah Lionetti, Molly Macilveen, Sher Min Tan , Heather Organ, William Swithinbank, Alexa Walker, Patrick Wu

Special thanks to:

Sam Clark Professional Tutor & Year 1 Chair
Sergio Pineda Professional Tutor
Dan Tilbury Craftsman (workshop)
Carol Creasey Facilities Manager

Norman Evans Western Timber Association (timber supply)
James Mak Forestry Commission Wales (hazel coppicing)
Nigel Gervis Ty-Mawr (clay and cow dung supply)
Ian Daniel St. Fagans National Museum Wales (wattle and daub workshop)
Liam Neal Neals Soil (soil supply)
Wilmot Dixon (soil supply)

See also:

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Tea house by David Maštálka	Hat Tea House by A1Architects	Paper Tea House by Shigeru Ban