Of all five senses, architecture often can´t capture one in particular: flavor. The Black Teahouse by a1 architects is a fine example of how to honour or even approach such an impossible task. Sitting beside a lake surrounded by woodland near the city of Ceska Lipa, Czech Republic, this ‘temple for tea’ has only 13, 50 sq. m. and is composed by an interior room that extends outside into a large veranda built with larch planks.
Visitors to this timber tea house can sit beneath a wonderful woven rope dome with a gilded skylight. A hanging teapot stands in the middle suspended from the ceiling by a knotted length of rope and nestles into a gap in the floor.
It’s a special place to contemplate nature while tasting a warm cup of tea, breathing the fresh fragrance of the lake and listening to the birds sing.
Featuring beautiful Japanese aesthetics, the Black Teahouse was carefully designed to become a natural part of the landscape: a floating wood structure rests over 6 foundation points. A rounded wall made of clay plaster, with three bamboo vases, defines the interior surface while sliding doors materialize the remaining walls of the tea room. The green roof is also eco friendly, resulting as a fragment of grassy surroundings. The outcome is a perception of the building as a part of the context, claiming back the space taken over by construction on the roof. Black came from the charred larch facing that covers the whole house. At the end of this post, the thing that crosses my mind is a catchy line from the Beatles song: “Can I bring my friend to tea? “.
Im just thinking falilng onto that steel netting would be like hitting a giant cheesegrater, ouchies! plus it looks kinda naff, the netting itself is fine, but the way its just kinda tacked on with that pipe isnt working for me at all. Given the choice of materials in the space a natutal fibre net might have been more appropriate and could have been fixed to the wall in a less intrusive manner