Tea House In Anji

Tsinghua University (THU), School of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Beijing

Project idea

The tea house project is located in Anji County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China, which is famous for its bamboo industry. There’s a wide range of bamboo covering the whole area, where people’s production and life are closely connected with this kind of plants from ancient times.

The design concept is based on a comprehensive understanding of site conditions, construction materials and tea-drinking history. Wind, light, view, sound and bamboo resonate with each other and perform a symphony to every tea-drinker in a magical way. The yellow surface of bamboo reflects the sunlight and give a sense of treasure to the old memory of drinking tea.

Project description

The ancient Chinese painting by Chou Ying explains to us the perfect form of bamboo construction - the bamboo paradise and the perfect way of drinking tea – lying under the trees .The paradise uses the light, easy-to-bend and easy-to-process bamboo to construct a resting space closely related to the body, and a leisurely mood of tea. Starting from this old images, the design aims to enhance the natural landscape of the Phoenix Mountain by creating a round hole in the roof and covering up the office buildings near the platform which also introduce wind and light through it. The other side invites the public and can be entered from every direction.

Since its official opening in May 2018, the tea house has gradually become a place where citizens spontaneously hold cultural activities, such as the folk tea competition at the Dragon Boat Festival and the free viewing event of the World Cup . The tea house also received many donated books from various public and organized cultural promotion salons. On an ordinary day, it provides people with a quiet and relaxing place to drink tea . Reflecting the Anji bamboo culture, the tea house also has brought vitality to this little town and thus makes contributions to the variety of public life in its community.

Technical information

In the first stage of the construction process, the team went to the site and made a scaled bamboo model, to clarify the whole design to the workers. We created a column sample with the help of the workers. In the second stage of the construction process, the workers finish all the construction work by hands.

To realize the design of an eccentric circle of huge circular roof and tiny scenery frame, we create a radial structure system by taking advantage of property of bamboo. We use axis coordinates to describe the position of different points and the center of coordinates is the scenery frame. There are two kind of bamboo columns in an umbrella-shaped supporting system : radial and tangential, which supports the giant roof in connection with each other. Two opposite radial bamboo columns compose a portal frame. Tangential bamboo columns compose a three-dimensional space structure with intersections and connections in the middle. A radial bamboo column and two tangential bamboo columns on the other side compose an arch. The combination of ring beams and inclined beams can give horizontal constraining force to the connection and endpoints of bended bamboo columns. There is rafter above the beam, above which is bamboo mat for interior effects. And boards and coil materials are used to resist water. On the top of roof is a layer of bamboo shoots which not only gives resistance to heat and also creates a natural atmosphere .

There are 1m*1m steel plates casted in the concrete base and steel pipes are welded on the plates in 5*4 and 7*4 grid in 10cm intervals, which connect bamboo columns and the base. The inclined beams connect ring beams and columns. Colum and beams are composed of several bamboos which are joined by bolts and fixed by hemp ropes. In the connection of bamboos, we use steam nails as rigid joint and hemp rope as flexible joints .

Co-authors

Concept Design : Bowen Lei, Qianer Zhu
Construction Design : Zhaoren Sun, Tianyi Song
Construction Coordinate : Zhaoren Sun, Tianyi Song, Zeyang Liu
Supervisor : Professor Yehao Song , Lecturer Ning Zhu
Lighting Consutant : Professor Xin Zhang