In China a cup of tea is so much more than just a delicious, warming drink. It is also a link between humanity and nature and a symbol of the Chinese way of life. An authentic tea room therefore needs to be more than a mere place to take tea.
Zhigang Lu embraced this idea when he created this new tea room in Shanghai. Based on the idea that every little bit of wood should be treated with heartfelt sincerity, he has arranged 999 pine sticks into a small tea salon, a separate space within a larger room. The rectangular sticks are hand-carved and have a cross-section of around 40 millimetres. The sticks are all positioned at different angles and depths so that together they form an oval. When the sun shines in through the circular window, the shadows from the tea room form circular patterns in the rectangular outer room. The idea of geometric details came to the architect when he heard an old man say that a circle always rotates, while a square is constant. The structure, whose details are a carefully guarded secret, took three months to erect and now the owner of the salon hopes that it will give visitors a moment of gentle recreation.
Read more at minax.com.cn
