Back to buildersOver 30 years' experience; designs and builds tea rooms and takes on overseas projects.
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Source: en.t-a.co.jp
An architectural design office in Kita Ward, Tokyo, with more than 30 years in practice. Its principal, Kuniji Tsubaki, is both an architect and a practitioner of tea, and the office centres on designing, building and renovating tea rooms and Japanese-style buildings.
Its view is that anything from a full grass-hut tea house to a simple room in the corner of a living space becomes a place for tea if made with an understanding of the spirit of tea. It also brings the work of Japanese craftsmen — joinery, Edo mounting, blinds, tatami and garden makers — into its buildings.
Its record includes an eight-mat tea room built within the limited space and budget of an apartment, and a tea room with a meeting space on a floor of a high-rise office. Under the banner of taking tea rooms to the world it welcomes overseas enquiries, and suits those who want a tea room in a home or shop.
A free-standing tea house built as an annex to a home (single-storey timber, 20.77 m²). A bench with a view fronts the three-and-three-quarter-mat room, and removing the mizuya partitions makes a room of about seven Kyoto mats. Timber chosen at Kiba was hand-cut by carpenters, and the garden reuses the site's existing stones and trees.
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A modern Japanese-style house with proper tea rooms (two-storey timber, 141.58 m²). From the entrance a crawl-in door leads to a two-and-three-quarter-mat room and a tatami corridor along the tea garden to an eight-mat room, with the living areas beyond and private rooms upstairs.
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An unused storeroom of a gallery owner converted into a tea room (25.7 m²): three Kyoto mats with a corner hearth and an earthen-floor seating area, a kitchen opened up as a standing mizuya, and a waiting bench with a standing water basin. Old fittings and a step the owner had kept were reused.
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A tea house for both archery and tea, with an eight-Kyoto-mat room and a two-mat small room. The high-ceilinged earthen entrance doubles as an archery practice space, and fire-safety sleeve walls and shutters were added while keeping the exterior simple.
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A tea room attached to a gallery whose use changes as the sliding fittings are opened or closed — a very simple space built around century-old fittings.
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At the Monozukuri craftsmanship festival the firm unveiled Shōsō-an (2016), a tea house of an eight-mat room, a two-and-three-quarter-mat room and a mizuya that assembles in four hours without metal fasteners. Zen-an, a tea room that fits in a suitcase, followed in 2017, and a lighter, stronger version was shown in 2024.
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On one floor of a global company's office, a tea room and a meeting space were laid out side by side, conceived as a place to take business to the world in the spirit of Zen.
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A one-mat tea room for contemplating bonsai, combining a bench, a one-mat host's area, an alcove and a water shelf, entered through a sliding door styled like a crawl-in entrance. It shuts out outside light and sound; walls are earth and mirrored lattice. The shop runs as a bonsai café.
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A long-standing kimono shop on the ground floor of an apartment building was remodelled into a Japanese-culture salon with an eight-Kyoto-mat room with a daime host's area and a large mizuya. The raised tea room doubles as a stage for rakugo, dance and other events.
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Within a tight space and budget: a dropped ceiling using the beams, an eight-mat room extending into the entrance hall, a mizuya shelf without plumbing, under-floor storage and a balcony route for tea gatherings.
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The top floor of a building near a station was remodelled into a salon with a tea room. The eight-mat room has a natural shibori log post and 2,500-year-old jindai cedar in the side alcove; a cedar counter over 4 m long allows table-style tea. A lightweight, wind-proofed tea garden sits on the roof terrace.
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A steel-framed terrace shed in the back garden was turned into a tea-house-style private room, with different wooden fittings on three sides, a shōji light ceiling and a solid zelkova alcove floor.
View on official site ↗Photos: Tsubaki Architectural Design Institute official website
Hearing your wishes, surveying the site and regulations and drawing a rough plan are free in principle; a design contract follows once you are happy with the direction.
Fees are paid in stages: 15% at contract, 15% on approval of the basic design, 40% on approval of the working drawings, 15% at framing completion and 15% after handover. If you have no builder, the office introduces one, reviews competing quotes, suggests value-engineering savings and supervises through roughly weekly site meetings.
The site introduces Hiroyoshi Ishii, 15th generation of a paperhanging family dating from the Edo period; joiner Daisuke Masuda; Edo paperhanger Akihiro Aizawa, who also makes tea-room screens; Kōtarō Tanaka, fifth generation of the Tanaka blind workshop founded in the early Meiji era and a Tokyo-certified traditional craftsman; and tatami maker Ryōichi Ozone.
Mushin-an, the tea room at Shibusawa Eiichi's Asukayama residence in Ōji, was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. The office is drawing plans from the few surviving records with the aim of reviving it, and began by holding a tea gathering on the site using the suitcase tea room Zen-an.
Photos: Tsubaki Architectural Design Institute official website
| Company | Tsubaki Architectural Design Institute Co., Ltd. |
|---|---|
| Address | 5-16-15 Shimo, Kita-ku, Tokyo |
| Established | February 1991 |
| Representative | Kuniji Tsubaki |
| Phone | +81-3-3903-7600 |
| Hours | Mon–Fri 10:00–18:00 (consultations also on weekends and holidays) |
| Business | Architectural design and supervision, office and shop interior design, furniture design and construction |
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