No matter how small it is, once a new building is settled, it will post a great influence on the environment and the people.. Located in a big campus, the 200 sqm tiny teahouse was settled to bring a difference to the daily life of university students. By carefully arranging the paths around site as well as access to the Teahouse, I was able to make this small building to be a gateway to the beautiful lake and waterfront green space. Inside the Teahouse is a series of continuous platforms, allowing people to walk freely when looking out to the nature surrounding them.

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The beautiful park in campus is an ideal place for students to relax. Yet most students prefer to walk around the park as the straight roads are more convenient than those serpentine pathways. The Teahouse encourages students to grab breakfast on the way to classroom, to enjoy a cup of coffee when there is no class, and most importantly, to step closer to the nature.

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Several different walkways are planned to invite students to walk into or through the Teahouse - a lakeside path, a woodland promenade, and a bridge. On the other hand, the main interior space for teahouse was placed on the lake as a better spot to enjoy the scenery while other rooms of various functions were scattered around on site.

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The main concern of this project is to deal with the relationship between the building and the landscape, and how to introduce the beautiful scenery – surface of the lake, lakeside pathway and grassland on the gentle slope – to interior space. Diversity of interior spaces is another design strategy. With different height and elevation of each space and the connections inbetween, sceneries are framed in different depth and proportions, changing with people’s movement.

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