Back to buildersA tea-room-specialist architect who designs by contracting directly with sukiya carpenters.
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Source: yujiro-onuki.com
A first-class architect office in Nerima, Tokyo, specialising in tea-room design. Its principal, Yujiro Onuki, began the way of tea at 17, was drawn to tea rooms and took a design job at a housing company before going independent. He is also a certified Urasenke instructor.
Layouts are settled through unhurried meetings and several rough proposals, and the client then contracts the construction directly with a sukiya carpenter specialising in tea rooms. The office takes on design and supervision for 11% of the construction cost and says it checks every key stage on site. It designs everything from rustic wabi rooms to shoin-style and modern tea rooms, to suit the budget.
Onuki has written for the tea magazine "Nagomi" (July 2023 issue, Tankosha) and published the e-book series "Making a Fine Tea Room," and supports tea-room design anywhere in Japan. He also backs up home builders with tea-room design and client negotiation. Suited to those who want a proper tea room within a limited home.
A room only 2,192 mm wide could not take four and a half mats, so a three-mat room with an upper-seat alcove was designed. Three shōji face the living room, the middle one serving as a service door; with them removed the space works as four and a half mats. A crawl-in entrance opens to the balcony, and reeds line the lowered ceiling over the host's mat.
View on official site ↗
A Western room of about 12 m² remodelled on the four-and-a-half-mat Yūin of Urasenke. The host's mat and main guest mats are Kyoto-size to suit the owner's daisu and screens; the flat ceiling sits below the beam and a sloping ceiling is finished in Satsuma reed. A shitaji window sits over the crawl-in entrance.
View on official site ↗
Designed for Urasenke practice as the most basic four-and-a-half-mat room with an upper-seat alcove. Following Yūin it uses bark-on logs and split-board ceilings, with a noble's entrance to the living room and a crawl-in entrance to the balcony. The floor is raised about 40 cm to take the sunken hearth.
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A chair seat in the lower part of the room lets guests who cannot kneel for long, such as an elderly teacher, join. Because the tea room floor is raised 40 cm, eye levels match between chair and mat. The alcove is set at an angle to avoid a structural column.
View on official site ↗For a teacher of a samurai-school tea tradition, a three-mat room raised 40 cm in place of the living-room sofa, with the hearth placed to keep circulation clear. The drawings show it doubling as a TV-watching space.
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A six-mat room (including storage) once converted to Western style became a four-and-a-half-mat room with a wall alcove, a mizuya without plumbing and L-shaped utensil storage. Existing shōji and shelves were kept to save cost, while a shitaji window and bark-edged posts give it a tea-room feel.
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From Onuki's time at Sekisui Design Works. An eight-mat room and veranda were slightly extended into an eight-mat room with a mid-placed alcove, a five-mat mizuya and a garden whose inner and outer paths use stone layouts in the informal and semi-formal styles.
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An eight-mat and seven-mat pair of rooms planned as a large room with a hearth and a four-mat small room (design only; built by another firm). Guests in the small room can lower their legs as at a sunken table; the alcove post is adzed chestnut with bark and the lintel is jindai cedar.
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Advice for a just-under-four-mat Western room: three borderless Ryukyu mats laid in a checkerboard with a wall alcove. The alcove wall uses tiles matching the living room, and the owner chose the materials. The room was featured in Tankosha's Nagomi magazine.
View on official site ↗Photos: Yujiro Onuki Architect & Associates official website
There are two options. Partial advice billed by time costs 30,000 yen per day (7.5 hours), kept low with mark-ups of a builder's drawings and hand-drawn rough plans and sketches. Or a full design contract that delivers plans, elevations, ceiling plans, specifications, electrical and plumbing drawings, perspectives and details.
You can ask before or after signing with a builder, and the office will deal with the builder directly if the drawings are not understood. It handles timber, steel and reinforced-concrete buildings.
In a timber-frame house the structural hinoki posts stand in the room, so a rustic room with bark-edged cedar posts must be built inside a second wall, making it smaller and dearer. In a concrete apartment the structure and fit-out are separate, so a small room can be laid out freely.
Shallow floors make hearths harder, but raising the floor solves this, and many examples put the crawl-in entrance on the balcony.
Rooms built purely for tea gatherings are often three to four and a half mats, frequently without a mizuya. Using the living room as waiting room, setting out a box for guests' belongings and offering hand towels in place of a stone basin, the whole home can carry a gathering.
Born in Tokyo in 1959, he completed a master's in design at Tokyo University of the Arts, then worked at GK's housing design department and at Sekisui Chemical on Sekisui Heim homes and renovation, supporting about 70 houses with tea rooms. Independent since 2019, he has designed about 120 tea rooms.
Photos: Yujiro Onuki Architect & Associates official website
| Company | Yujiro Onuki First Class Architect Office |
|---|---|
| Address | Nerima, Tokyo |
| Established | January 5, 2020 |
| Representative | Yujiro Onuki (first-class architect; Urasenke certified instructor) |
| Licenses | First-class architect office, Tokyo Governor registration No. 63553 |
| Business | Tea-room design and construction supervision, house and exterior design, design training for companies |
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