House of Time Tea House for SEIKO ”The Gift of Time”
A temporary four-and-a-half-mat tearoom was designed for one night only in the Grand Jardin, the courtyard of the Ritz Hotel facing Place Vendôme in Paris.
No nails, bolts, or other metal fasteners were used; instead, all the components were joined using the traditional Japanese Kango (interlocking) technique, in which notched members are fitted together. This method not only shortens assembly and disassembly time but also allows the structure to be easily taken apart and relocated — a “traveling tearoom” that can journey to various places.
The roof and walls are made of sumushiko, a transparent screen composed of thin bamboo strips just 4 mm wide, pushing to the extreme the sense of transparency that has always been inherent in the traditional tearoom.
