A music recital room resembling a Japanese tea house hangs like a lantern in the garden of a residence northwest of Washington DC.
The glass and bronze pavilion was completed by American architect David Jameson back in 2009 and is suspended from a pair of steel arms.
A ten centimetre-thick wooden door leads inside, where a faceted timber ceiling points down into the centre of the room.
A planted garden of bamboo surrounds the pavilion, which is illuminated at night by lights in the floor.
The client's family use the room for music performances, dining and as a quiet space for contemplation.
Other teahouses on Dezeen include one built atop two chestnut trees and another with a tall hat-like roof - see all our stories about tea houses here.
David Jameson also recently completed a house with a barcode on its facade - see our earlier story here.
Photography is by Paul Warchol.
Here are some more details from the architect:
Tea House
A hanging bronze and glass object inhabits the backyard of a suburban home.
The structure, which evokes the image of a Japanese lantern, acts as a tea house, meditation space, and stage for the family's musical recitals.
After experiencing the image of the lantern as a singular gem floating in the landscape, one is funneled into a curated procession space between strands of bamboo that is conceived to cleanse the mind and prepare one to enter the object.
After ascending an origami stair, the visitor is confronted with the last natural element: a four inch thick, opaque wood entry door.
At this point the visitor occupies the structure as a performer with a sense of otherworldliness meditation.
Architect: David Jameson Architect
Structural Engineer: Linton Engineering
Completed: 2009
Aesthetically, I really like it, very nice material contrasts and great steel structure design. Functionnally, I'm a lot less enthousiatic, music performance or meditation in a space that is probably terribly noisy? Sound reverberation must be very high…I'm not a big fan of the location either, such a nice shelter tucked in the corner of a small garden, right against the fences, is not really thrilling and don't do it justice, it should be in the middle of a forest…
architectural gymnastics
those steel beams are not only a structural waste, but architecturally ruin the lightness and ephemerality character of the tea house
Interior and the "box" itself is very elegant, I also like the idea of hanging and flowing. But I find the massive structure for such a elegant, nice "box" a little too aggressive, specially in garden like this.
If the architect really understands about sophisticated Japanese style and
meaning of fragility in their culture,
it shouldn't be mentioned about Japanese tea house to explain his work….
it's totally different stuff.
Floating poetics is destroyed by huge steel frames for hanging.
Without bamboos and tea ceremony equipment set in pictures,
it is much more like flower shop/greenhouse on the street.
A Foly !
Agree on the previous comments, scale and location seem inappropriate. Steel is very aggressive and contradict both meditation and performance.
Difficult balance between the iconic and the truthfulness.
Personally I LOVE the steel. It is exactly the heaviness of the steel that makes this beautiful structure so striking. Not to mention that it needs to hang from something people – it has a lot of glass, wood and metal in it. Perhaps it's because I life in California, land of seismic retrofits?
Wow I thought this could be a good design to counter that effect too! It could swing or bounce like a Jack-In-The-Box!
I like the play of steel with the glass box, looks fragile & serene! Maybe the steel should be green to blend in with it’s surroundings? LOVE IT!
Kathleen
maybe a little heavy on the structure there??
the architects ego is pre eminent, lousy choice of materials
It would be lovely if not for the superfluous and utterly intrusive steel girders.
What a waste of steel.