Tea house

 We designed and constructed the waiting house for the Japanese tea room called Sekiyuan in a residential area of Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture. This tea room was set up in a corner of the residence, and while a garden had been created, there was no “waiting house” where guests could briefly sit in the alleyway during tea ceremonies, awaiting the host's call. This space was desired. The client, a tea master, studied oil painting at an art university and also loved pottery. He was someone who could create things as naturally as breathing. Typically, buildings are expected to function as vessels with a specific purpose, serving as tools. Especially for something like a residence, used daily and essential for living, no room... More

In this project, AIYA Bureau focused on designing a tea house with a garden – an intimate retreat within a larger private estate. The goal was to create a place where architecture, interior, and landscape work together to shape a calm, contemporary environment that respects tradition and embraces sustainable living. Caption Caption Caption Caption The tea house was conceived as a restrained architectural volume, where proportions and surfaces invite stillness. Inside, natural timber, soft textures, and bespoke joinery establish a tactile richness. The palette is deliberately subdued, allowing light and shadow to animate the space throughout the day. Instead of decorative excess, the focus is on craftsmanship and m... More

Background This is a project to renovate part of the building of Maruyasu Chagyo, a tea wholesaler for more than 150 years in Tsuchiyama, which prospered as a post town on the Tokaido Highway, facing the Suzuka Pass, as a tea dormitory and a roasting house. The project started with the aim of creating a “place” where people can casually enjoy tea and communicate the appeal of Japanese tea for the sustainable development of tea culture and the local tea industry in the midst of declining household consumption of Japanese tea. Kazuoki Yasugi Kazuoki Yasugi Themes We aimed to create a state of harmony between the time-honored and the new, a state of nostalgia with a sense of novelty, so that local residents who used t... More

Sang Tea transitions from the mountains to the city, evolving from tea drinking in a natural setting to enjoying tea in an urban environment. This shift brings new elements into the brand’s narrative. Urban influences are seamlessly integrated, merging the tranquility of nature with the bustling energy of city streets, evoking a timeless, unhurried sense of life. The space itself has matured from the fresh, vibrant green of the mountains into a more subdued, sophisticated yellow-green, blending the authenticity of nature with the refined tone of urban leisure. Simon Liu Simon Liu Located in Hangzhou’s old city district, Sang Tea like its neighboring shops, occupies a space beneath an old residential building. To incre... More

The Dalinggen Village Tea House, designed by Studio RE+N and honored with an Architizer A+ Award Special Mention in the Unbuilt Commercial category, is set to complete construction around June 2025. This 200-square-meter cultural and community hub is nestled in the Organic Tea Valley Park of Songyang County, Zhejiang Province. The project creatively repurposes a former signal tower and mechanical room into a lively center for cultural engagement, while preserving the tower’s functionality and celebrating the area’s longstanding tea heritage. Studio RE+N Studio RE+N Studio RE+N Arriving from the southwest, visitors are welcomed into a reception area reached by a winding, ascending path that mirrors the strolls of... More

Kaomai Tea Barn is a continuously adaptive-reuse project within Kaomai Estate 1955, the revitalized project of a multi-decade tobacco processing plant estate in Chiang Mai. In 2018, Kaomai Estate 1955 was awarded by the 2018 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation in New Design in Heritage Contexts category. As part of the incremental plan to unite new commercial programs in the estate, the project location is carefully placed to respect, yet link the surrounding ecology, landscape and existing buildings together. As a result, the design envisions Kaomai Tea Barn as a connection platform to link Kaomai Avenue, the Amphitheater, and Kaomai Cafe both horizontally and vertically. Spaceshift Studio Following the cons... More

The project was launched with the ambitious objective of transforming a former coal-mining area into a landscape park, which is not only a model for the landscape design that is so essential in China, but also contains a building infrastructure that can be used for researching into and offering people access to and information about natural ecosystems. The politically stated need to create high-quality leisure areas in or close to cities and to find ways of controlling the resulting large numbers of visitors formed the basis for the definition of a spatial programme. This envisaged not only the creation of the landscape park itself, but also the construction of a central entrance building with a nature museum and administration facility, th... More