“Enjoying a wonderful apartment and delicious food are ordinary, worldly pleasures. A house through whose roof it doesn’t rain is enough for us.” Sen no Rikyû
Basic Structure
Since in Japanese buildings the basic structure is minimised to what is statically absolutely necessary and, moreover, virtually no furniture fill the rooms, one can focus on the purely functional requirements. The load-bearing structure consists of slender, identical dimensioned elements that allow a maximum of two stories. Japan is a culture of horizontal movement, and even the pagodas, the only Japanese architectural form designed for the vertical direction, are marked by the horizontal need of the different roofs.
Our structure thus limits itself to the basic rectangular orthogonals, which are of course positioned according to the site. The only elements we need to associate is the main tree, of which the canopy will act as roof, and the floor of our ROOM.
In the following pages, it is elaborated that Japanese building is “architecture on the floor”, rather than the walls. Thus, in the West, the walls will be built first. In Japan, on the other hand, the wooden skeleton meets all the static requirements to support the roof, which will be mounted first, permitting the rest of the construction to happen under its protection. As will be specified in its chapter, Japanese architecture is based on a simple support-beam system which consists exclusively on vertical and horizontal elements, without the use of diagonals to retain flexibility and guarantee the elasticity needed during earthquakes. The infill of the walls is an afterthought, since they bear no supportive function whatsoever, and thus can be made only of shoji screens, if needed. This aspect is felt in the Japanese word for wall; shinkabe. Kabe means wall, and shin means the middle of columns, designating the more important thickness and support of the beams and columns, while the walls are only in-between.
Indeed, in our project, we left the walls out completely. Emulating the essence of Japanese building as an orthogonal wooden skeleton singlehandedly bearing the roof, it was a natural move to prove this by restricting ourselves to only dress a standard rectangular structure to support our “roof”-tree, as in the canopy. The walls were not important, the house was already static. Only the floor was of importance. This was also to keep the appearance of a light structure:
„the general structure follows the Japanese building principles: it is formed from a simple sequence of overlapping horizontal and vertical elements […] constructive elements are dimensioned in such a way that they appear light and fragile“. Wolgang Fehrer, The Japanese Teahouse
It is worth noting that elevating the floor is important, for reasons we will elaborate on further in the following pages. Other than that however, the foundations are less specifically meaningful. We only tried to remain as little invasive in the riverbed as possible, which worked for us, considering that we are mainly basing us on the anchoring structure around the natural knot:
„the floor of the Japanese house is elevated about 70 to 80 centimetres from the ground […] the building is not firmly anchored in the ground and does not receive any additional stabilization from the foundation. In former times supporting columns and posts were put directly into the earth, only in the 8th century the technique of placing supporting columns on buried foundation stones was adopted form China. […] the surface of the earth remained as untouched as possible so that „the veins of the dragon are not damaged“, as an old geomantic commandment from China dictates.“ Manfred Speidel, Das japanische Wohnhaus und die Natur, in Japanische Architektur – Geschichte und Gegenwart, p.1
Freeing ourselves from any classic measurements was not needed, since:
„apart from the standard dimensions of the mats, […] the builders are not bound to their rules here, everything, the ceiling, the treatment of the wooden posts, the plaster, in short the whole style, is extremely free.“ Bruno Taut, Das Tagebuch, p. 161.
However, functionally speaking, the teahouse has to be a building with certain attributes: it is composed of two main elements, which are the building itself and the surrounding garden. The interior of the building, as much representing Japanese thinking as it is influencing it, presents a tatami floor and the tokonoma, usually with a hanging scroll or a flower arrangement. We will elaborate on it further in the following chapters. Adjacent to the tea-room itself are a few optional ante-rooms designed for tea ceremony preparations.
Since we restricted ourselves to the pure essence of the Japanese teahouse, we did not opt for any functional room. Our ROOM is the abstract idea, rather than the functional necessity.