Digital tea house: Japanese tea ceremony as a pretext for exploring parametric design and digital fabrication in architectural education

This paper reviews the Digital Tea House, a joint workshop in August of 2010 held at the University of Tokyo, Department of Architecture, together with Columbia University GSAPP. Three pavilions for hosting ceremony were designed and built in less than one month, in an attempt to bridge technology and culture not only through design but also fabrication. Issues addressed in the process included applications of computational design, interpretations of tradition and culture in spatial or activity oriented expressions, structural stability, to practical solutions for quick physical materialization. Three teams comprised of 6 to 8 students, each a blend of different nationalities, ultimately produced 3 full-scale tea houses with the same software, primary material, budget, and principal fabrication method.