Kengo Kuma's inflatable tea house

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has installed a modern tea house in the garden of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt.
 


Kengo Kuma develops the traditional teahouse architecture further, while at the same time venturing onto entirely unexplored territory with regard to his design. In search of flexible buildings - Kuma uses the term “weak architecture” - he has arrived at a truly ephemeral structure with this project.

The teahouse does not rise up from the ground as a fixed wooden construction, but unfolds as an airborne form. When a ventilation system is activated, the teahouse swells into shape like a white high-tech textile blossom. In its interior, comprising a surface of approximately twenty square metres, are nine tatami mats, an electric stove for the water kettle, a tokonoma niche and a preparation room. Integrated LED technology allows the use of the teahouse at night; the interior can be heated by way of the membrane.