Tea House Exhibition Opening Reception

Join us for this opening reception featuring 8 tea houses designed and built by students in Architecture 311 taught by Naomi Darling, Five College Associate Professor of Sustainable Architecture. Japanese sweets and tea will be served.

Sohini Bhatia
Grace Chen
Kai Grocki
Catherine Kazel
Yahui Liu
Jiaming Ma
Meghan Macbeth
Lauren Madsen
Xinyi Qi
Lynn Sleinman
Dara Weingarten
Claire Williams
Linh Mai, Teaching Assistant

Co-sponsored by the Art History & Architectural Studies Department, the Fimbel Maker & Innovation Lab, the Office of Residential Life, and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

Back row, L to R: Lynn Sleiman, Meghan MacBeath, Catherine Kazel, Linh Mai, Naomi Darling, Grace Chen, Kai Grocki, Xinyi Qi, Yahui Lui. Front row, L to R: Dara Weingarten, Sohini Bhatia, Claire Williams, Jiaming Ma.

TEA HOUSE DESIGN / BUILD 2 EXHIBITION
MAY 1-5, 2023
Exhibition Guide

Sharing a bowl of tea in the context of Japanese Tea Ceremony is intimate, meditative, philosophical, and spiritual. It demands that the participants are fully present in the moment. The tea ceremony takes place within a tea room or cha-shitsu, sometimes housed within a stand-alone structure or tea house.

For architects, the traditional Japanese Tea House, known for its simplicity of program and space, is an exciting typology with which to test ideas and experiment with materials, technology and construction techniques. Facing the climate crisis, it also becomes a vehicle through which as designers we can practice restraint, reuse and design for disassembly. This spring, 2023, Tea House Design/Build – ARCH 311, was offered at Mount Holyoke College and taught in the Fimbel Maker and Innovation Lab. Students from Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College and UMass Amherst participated. This exhibition highlights student work undertaken over the course of the semester including models and analytical drawings of traditional and contemporary tea houses as well as eight unique full scale tea houses.

The students were given the following design requirements:

• The tea house must have a clear design concept.
• The tea house must accommodate 2 people – a host and one guest.
• The tea house must be portable.
• Each person may work alone or with a partner.
• Each person has a budget of $80 plus any free materials.

Please enjoy and have a cup of tea!

Naomi Darling
Five College Associate Professor of Sustainable Architecture
Mount Holyoke College // UMass Amherst

Linh Mai ‘23
Teaching Assistant // Exhibition Designer
Mount Holyoke College

Students of Architecture 311
Sohini Bhatia
Grace Chen
Kai Grocki
Catherine Kazel
Yahui Liu
Jiaming Ma
Meghan Macbeth
Lauren Madsen
Xinyi Qi
Lynn Sleinman
Dara Weingarten
Claire Williams