Architects:TEMP

Year :2019

Photographs :Weiqi Jin

Design Team : Howard Jiho Kim, Zihua Chen, Dakyung Hwang, Tianhao Zhou

City : Hangzhou

Country : China

Beijing-based architecture studio, TEMP, has designed a tea house in Xixi Wetland located at the west part of Hangzhou, China. Xixi Wetland is a national park densely packed with ponds, lakes, and swamps which also has a 1800 years of cultural heritage.

The larger indoor space is formed by placing private rooms for drinking tea. These rooms are scattered around with stone paths connecting each other. While they are walled off by bricks  to create a certain level of privacy, wooden louvers and gaps within walls offer a sense of opening. Varying levels of transparencies from heavy and solid to light and open form spaces of many layers.

The tea house is mainly built with the simple materials as bricks, wood, stones, and bamboo. Bricks are layered vertically with certain parts left porous. Wooden louvers slide or swing to open and close the tea rooms. A few furniture and a pavilion are made from local bamboo structured in tenon joints.

The outdoor courtyard is stepped into different heights of granite stairs and platforms.  Pools of water and trees divide the larger space and create shade for the seating areas.

The tea house creates a place for drinking traditional Chinese tea in a modern way using simple materials. The project is spatially exploring to bring outdoor landscape indoors and to form layers of varying privacy and openness.

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