The ultimate personal architecture

This a tea house located in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Its name is Takasugi-an which translates roughly to “a tea house built too high”.  It was built by Terunobu Fujimori, a tea master, who has an interest in architecture and wished to push the limit of a traditional teahouse. Sits atop two chestnut trees, Fujimori designed and built the structure for his own use. Built in 2004, one of the interesting points is the method Fujimori used to support the tea tree house.

Rather than build in existing live trees, he instead chose to harvest two Chestnut trees from a local mountain and install the trunks like irregular poles to support his creation. Like traditional Japanese teahouses, the Takasugi-an was built for ceremony rather than comfort and luxury, so the interior is very modest – covered with plaster and bamboo mats. Building upon this tradition, Fujimori’s tea house is quite small and compact and can accommodate four and a half tatami mats (2.7 sq m) or even just two tatami mats (1.8 sq m) of floor space, makes it feel as though it were an extension of one’s body, “like a piece of clothing’. It is accessible only by free-standing ladders propped against one of the trees. To enter, visitors must remove their shoes and crawl through a nijiriguchi, or small entry opening.

>Project name: Takasugi-an
Description: teahouse
Category: religion and memorial
Design: Terunobu Fujimori
Building status: built
Construction period: started 2004
Location: Chino, Japan
Tags: local material, craftsmanship