-
Architects: Jí Architect
- Area: 25 m²
- Year: 2019
-
Photographs:Boris Shiu
Text description provided by the architects. Jí Architect designed and installed a tea pavilion at the request of SMiTH (Beijing) a brand image design consultant of a tea company. The pavilion was intended to accommodate approximately 20 to 40 participants of Mountain Trip to Tea Plantations, an outdoor event organized by the tea company, when they were drinking tea and watching Chinese tea ceremony in the open air. The design needed to consider the convenience of installation, dismantling, and reuse of dismantled components for the next year's event. All the components of the pavilion were made in Beijing and delivered for on-site installation.
The location of the tea pavilion is on a ridge of Yibang tea mountain, the northernmost part of Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. The mountain ridge is said to be a section the Ancient Tea Horse Road. It reaches deep into jungle, surrounded by dense tea plants. Besides fulfilling the pavilion's intended purpose, we made use of the "line" element of the tea brand image to present a "line" on the mountain ridge, which not only infused a sense of ritual into the design but echoed the brand image.
The number of each year's event participants is a variable ranging from 20 to 40, so the design of the pavilion should be a flexible solution to accommodate different number of participants. After the components were made, we were clearly informed that the number of this event's participants would be 39.
We designed a simple three-way brass component to connect with oak wood so that any single person could install and dismantle the pavilion with an Allen key. And there is an instruction manual that, if followed, will make the installation and dismantling an ease.
