Tea House for Soseikan-Yamaguchi House (双生観の茶室)
Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture
Sources checked November 2026
- Year
- 1982
- Architect
- Tadao Ando
- Type
- Tea house (private residence)
- Access
- Part of a private residence, not open to visitors
In 1982 Tadao Ando added this concrete tea house to the Soseikan-Yamaguchi House, which he had designed in Takarazuka in the mid-1970s. A path, the roji, runs to a nijiriguchi, the small traditional entrance one crawls through; here it is a fixed pane of glass, which at once invites entry and prevents it.
A private, lived-in home: it is not open to visitors. It is placed without an address, from a public source, at neighbourhood or city level.
History
The tea house is an extension of the Soseikan-Yamaguchi House, which Tadao Ando had designed in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, in the mid-1970s; he added it in 1982.
Its axonometric and perspective drawings were among the early original drawings by Ando exhibited from June to September 2019 at the National Archives of Modern Architecture in Tokyo.
Architecture
The tea house is built of concrete and enclosed by an alley, the roji. The alley ends at a nijiriguchi, the small traditional entrance one crawls through; but this is not a door, it is a fixed pane of glass, so the entry seems offered yet stays closed.
For the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, the Church of the Light (1989) takes its form as much from this tea house as from the truncated basilica plan; the church, too, is enclosed by a roji.
Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture
Greenhouses nearby
Architecture nearby
A private, lived-in home: it is not open to visitors. It is placed without an address, from a public source, at neighbourhood or city level.