Akihabara Tea House (Temple University Tokyo, Spring 2013)

Site: Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan

This was a 1-week design charrette for a temporary tea house structure on an existing site in Akihabara, Tokyo. As a class, we divided the site into a grid and each individual was allotted 4 parcels. We came up with a range of height constraints and an overall site access and circulation strategy and then got to work on our own pavilions. I was very interested in the idea of a temporary installation in conjunction with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which sees beauty in ephemeral, weathered, and ever-changing materials and processes. I attempted to synthesize these notions on my mini site by creating a short pilgrimage beginning from the back of the overall site, accessed by the river, up to a summit and destination of my tea house. Bamboo is the main spatial element that carves the path to the top and as one moves through the forest, views of outside fade in and out. For the tea house itself, an origami tectonic seemed to fit with the impermanent nature of the project. By using a thin, light-weight, foldable bio-composite, the structure could theoretically be manipulated to the user's desired tea house experience and then packed up and easily transported off-site, or simply left to continue to reflect the fleeting conditions of its surroundings.