A sense for space

The shouts of HE joy echo through the empty hallways.

“It’s complete!” cry out the cheerful children who participated in an event at a former school earlier this month in the middle of the Golden Week holidays.

What had been completed was a cocoon-like “tea ceremony room” made of thin bamboo strips.

The event, titled “Let’s make a tearoom! workshop,” was planned by 204 Architecture, a group of six architectural firms that have set up offices in the closed Ikejiri Middle School building in Tokyo, with the aim of helping children learn about what they do. The group has held similar events in the past, including one in which things were created with wire gauze. This month’s event was the eighth to be held by the group.

Thirty-five people, including families, participated in the event. Under the guidance of lecturers, participants started to make parts, such as the walls and ceiling of the tearoom, with thin bamboo strips. They tied together arched bamboo strips with colourful threads, then created a tea ceremony room with the combined strips by fixing them to ring-shaped bamboo strips. It took about three hours for them to make a tent-like tea ceremony room with bamboo strips. 

Clad in kimonos, members of the architectural firms served tea to participants in the newly made tea ceremony room.

Satomi Hosoya, 6, a first-grade primary school student in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was delighted. “The tea that I had in the room was really nice.” Architect Izumi Kobayashi, 43, one of the event organisers, said, “I hope children will develop the ability to grasp a sense of space through their experience of |creating things while having fun.”