Shi-an’, an ephemeral tea house made of washi paper

Shi-an’ is an ephemeral tea house built entirely from washi paper, without the use of glue.
To achieve this, designer Akinori Inuzuka has invented an origami technique (the art of paper folding in Japan) which ensures the stability of the structure and enables the tea house to be assembled in a modular fashion. Starting with 50cm x 100cm sheets of washi paper, the origami technique involves folding the sheet 8 times to obtain a single unit (which could be compared to a kind of brick) with two “pockets” and two “arms”, the arms fitting into the pockets without any glue.

In Takuya Watanabe’s photos below, the ‘Shi-an’ tea house is presented in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Nijō Castle, built in 1603 in Kyoto at the beginning of the Edo period. This tea house, measuring around 2 metres in diameter, is inspired by the ephemeral beauty and minimalism that are strong Japanese values. It can be assembled and dismantled quickly and easily. What’s more, its origami structure allows it to be built in a variety of ways, adapting it to a multitude of activities. The designer explains that “the cellular structure metabolizes its own body like living creatures for continuous adaptation to the surrounding environments and its uses”.