Interview about Tea Time Cultural Space, winner of the A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award 2025
Tea Time is a reimagined tea house in Jianshui Ancient Town, designed to blend tradition with modern aesthetics. It enhances light, airflow, and spatial flow while preserving historical charm. Six immersive tea experiences unfold in a space shaped by copper-toned facades, transparent details, and nature-inspired elements. Water-textured acrylic, glass tiles, and preserved elmwood create a sensory journey, where architecture and nature shape each moment in time.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsTea Time Cultural Space emerged from a desire to reinterpret the traditional tea house as a “living flow of time” — where ancient rituals meet contemporary sensibilities. The concept draws inspiration from Jianshui’s long-standing tea culture and architectural heritage, reimagined through a modern lens that emphasizes lightness, fluidity, and sensory engagement. The design’s guiding idea was to allow time to become perceptible — to let visitors experience the transformation of light, texture, and aroma as if each cup of tea unfolds within a moving landscape. This dialogue between tradition and modernity, stillness and motion, defines the project’s poetic essence.
The use of water-textured acrylic and translucent glass tiles was inspired by the reflective and fluid qualities of tea itself — its surface ripples, its clarity, and its ever-changing hues. These materials transform sunlight into a living material, refracting light like liquid and creating a meditative ambiance that mirrors the slow rhythm of tea brewing. As daylight passes through, surfaces seem to breathe; shadows ripple like water, echoing the ancient philosophy of finding movement within stillness. The result is an atmosphere that deepens sensory awareness, allowing visitors to perceive tea not just as a beverage but as an experience of space, time, and light.
The six scenes of “Tea, Flowing Time” form the spatial and emotional backbone of Tea Time Cultural Space. Each scene transforms the act of tea drinking into a dialogue between architecture, light, nature, and emotion, unfolding like a six-chapter poem that connects visitors with the rhythm of time.Scene One – Tea Welcomes Guests, Cityscape Blends introduces visitors through a copper-toned “metal ribbon” façade paired with ultra-clear glass, where light reflects between the display of new teas and the view of the ancient city. This opening gesture merges the tea room with the surrounding urban landscape, allowing the city’s scenery and the delicate utensils to coexist in visual harmony — a metaphor for tradition embracing modernity.Scene Two – Simplicity and Naturalness, Unwinding Time returns to the essence of tea through minimalism. The palette of stone, wood, and earth tones creates a serene and grounding interior, inviting guests to slow their pace and feel the calm flow of time — as if each breath resonates with the stillness of nature.Scene Three – Containing Wind and Absorbing Air Energy, Freehand Brushwork transforms air and light into design elements. Open interfaces and spatial permeability allow natural breezes and sunlight to flow freely, connecting the interior and exterior tea spaces. The interplay of shadows, tree silhouettes, and outdoor seating blurs boundaries, forming a living landscape painting where human presence, nature, and architecture intertwine in gentle movement.Scene Four – Diverting Light into Water, Blending Tea and Water explores the relationship between illumination and emotion. Ripple-textured acrylic and glass tiles filter daylight into soft waves of brightness that glide over beams and floors, shaping a “tea garden of light.” The fluid reflections make light feel like water, and time — gentle as a stream — seeps quietly into the sensory experience of tea.Scene Five – By Means of Mountain and Water, Tea and Wood Complement Each Other pays homage to the harmony of natural materials. Anti-corrosion elm planks, stone-textured bases, and tree-stump seating create a tactile dialogue between tea, mountain, and wood. Here, the aroma of tea fuses with the essence of the land, extending the landscape’s vitality into the act of tasting and sharing.Scene Six – Raindrops Pattering on Banana Leaves concludes the journey with sound and emotion. When rain falls, its rhythmic tapping against banana leaves composes a natural melody — a tranquil moment reminiscent of traditional Chinese gardens. Tea fragrance mingles with the sound of rain, and time seems suspended in that harmony between stillness and motion.Together, these six scenes form a continuous sensory narrative, where light, wind, water, wood, and sound transform architecture into a living tea ceremony. The design thus captures the core spirit of Tea Time Cultural Space — to let visitors experience time as it flows gently through every cup, every reflection, and every breath.
The design approach began with respect for the local context — preserving the site’s spatial proportion, façade rhythm, and material tonality characteristic of Jianshui’s historic architecture. Instead of direct imitation, we chose reinterpretation: copper-toned metal replaced traditional clay tiles, while transparent details introduced lightness and visual permeability. The building form remains rooted in traditional courtyard typology, yet open circulation and improved ventilation reflect contemporary needs. This dialogue between old and new, opacity and transparency, allows Tea Time to become a cultural bridge — one that honors memory while embracing modern life.
Material selection was guided by the philosophy of natural evolution and temporal beauty. The copper-toned façade changes subtly over time, oxidizing into richer shades that echo the patina of teapots and the warmth of aged wood. Preserved elmwood, sourced from local structures, retains the texture of history — each grain carrying the marks of time. Together, these materials embody the idea of wabi-sabi, celebrating imperfection and impermanence. Their tactile and visual depth allows the act of tea drinking to expand into a spatial meditation, where one can sense both the earthiness of tradition and the refinement of modern craft.
Spatial organization and natural ventilation were designed to evoke the rhythm of tea brewing — calm, continuous, and intentional. Openings, partitions, and courtyards are arranged to guide air, light, and sound in a balanced sequence, much like the gestures of a tea master. Each turn and transition allows visitors to breathe with the building — experiencing temperature, fragrance, and sound as interconnected elements. This architectural choreography creates a sense of mindfulness; it slows perception and deepens the visitor’s emotional connection to both space and ceremony.
Sustainability was achieved through passive design principles that align with the site’s traditional wisdom. The orientation maximizes daylight while reducing direct solar gain. The layered façade of metal screens and acrylic panels provides natural shading and thermal balance. Cross-ventilation eliminates the need for mechanical cooling for most of the year, while locally sourced materials minimize embodied carbon. By combining ancient environmental strategies with modern detailing, Tea Time achieves low energy consumption without compromising the poetic atmosphere intrinsic to traditional tea spaces.
The deep balcony was conceived as a transitional realm — neither fully inside nor outside. It allows visitors to pause, observe, and engage in quiet dialogue with the surrounding townscape. Functionally, it mediates between the intimate tea chambers and the open public lounge, offering flexibility for both solitude and social interaction. This spatial gradient reflects the social philosophy of tea — a balance between introspection and communion. The balcony thus becomes a stage for subtle social rituals, where architecture orchestrates human connection through pause, distance, and view.
Tea Time seeks to redefine what a tea house can mean in the modern era — not merely a venue for consumption but a spatial expression of cultural introspection. By blending ancient aesthetics with contemporary materiality and light-based design, it demonstrates how tradition can be renewed rather than replicated. I hope this project inspires a new generation of designers to treat traditional architecture as a living organism — one that evolves through reinterpretation, sensitivity, and emotional depth.
Cultural preservation should never be about freezing time; it is about continuing time with respect and creativity. My advice is to begin by deeply understanding the essence of place — its materials, climate, rituals, and emotions — and then reinterpret those qualities through the lens of the present. True innovation in cultural design comes not from novelty, but from sincerity, from allowing architecture to express continuity between memory and imagination, heritage and future.
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