Yo Shimada Lab, Environmental Design, KCUA

n-an

— n Forms of Tea Gathering, a Tea Room Left Unfixed —

Location

Kitano Tenmangu Shrine

Principal Use

Tea room

Design

Yo Shimada Laboratory, Kyoto City University of Arts

Supervising Faculty

Yo Shimada, Wataru Doi, Kosaku Matsumoto

Students

Nodoka Honda, Taisei Yoshida, Tomoki Yamatomura, Haruto Miyazaki, Misaki Hamakawa, Mariachiara Bolis (exchange student, Politecnico di Milano)

The number of guests, the movements involved, and the distance between people differ with each gathering. “n-an” is a tea room composed of a central two-and-a-half-tatami room and four movable units surrounding it. In response to those who gather, it transforms from a closed tea gathering into an open one. By generating n different ways of use, it proposes a tea room in which not only those familiar with tea, but also children and first-time visitors, can naturally take part.

The Grand Kitano Tea Gathering once opened the practice of tea, previously confined within the tea room, out to the scale of the shrine precincts. In this project, the yojohan — the four-and-a-half-tatami room that forms the basic spatial unit of the tea room — is reconsidered not as a self-contained space, but as a unit capable of unfolding into its surroundings. By dividing the plan in four directions from the central half-tatami, the tea room once again opens into its relationship with the precincts.

Each unit can be carried by three people, making setup and removal easy. When closed, the units form an enclosed, floor-seated tea room with the walls drawn close (Okomori-an); rotated 45 degrees, they create a ryūrei-style tea room with a circulation route for serving tea (Propeller-an); shifted 900 mm outward, they form a breezy tea room in which inside and outside flow together (Manji-an); opened by 450 mm, they create a tea room that can be entered from any direction (Koshikake-an); and when one unit is moved away to an existing bench, another place for tea emerges (Barabara-an). Moving the units adjusts not only the number of guests, but also the way light and wind enter the space. The roof extends outward in 600 mm increments from the central tea room, so that even when the units are opened, the passages between them remain covered.

Part of the walls is clad in “eggshell tiles.” In Kyoto, eggs are consumed throughout its food culture and everyday life, yet the moment their shells have served their purpose, they are treated as waste. Rather than treating eggshells simply as a recycled material, we attempted to transform these small traces of everyday life into units that constitute architecture. Taking the eggshell as a starting point, students from other departments joined the collaboration to create the tea gathering as a whole — from natsume tea caddies, tea scoops, and tea bowls made with eggshell and lacquer, to a hanging scroll, and even confections made with eggs.