Tingtai Teahouse by Linehouse
How is tradition best carried forward? At Shanghai’s Tingtai Teahouse, Linehouse serves it with renewal of form and experience.
Despite an influx of multinational coffee shop chains, the demand for tea remains strong across China. In a country where tea drinking is deeply embedded within the cultural fabric, the teahouse endures as a place of socialising and entertaining. In Pengzhen Town, the 300-year-old Guanyin Pavilion Teahouse is still operating, humble and gritty, and complete with original 1950s propagandist murals. And the world’s first ‘tea culture’ hotel recently opened its very upscale doors in Fujian province. But perhaps the most intriguing of them all is Tingtai Teahouse, an Insta-worthy offering that exudes a reverence for tradition without the nostalgia, and taps into a modern sensibility by eschewing opulence in favour of strict pared-back sophistication.
Designed by Linehouse, the project involved the adaptive reuse of a former textile factory and art gallery on lively Moganshan Road in Shanghai’s art district. “Our concept was to create a series of private teahouses, which all offer their own individual spatial experience and level of privacy,” says Briar Hickling, who, along with Alex Mok, is Co-Director of Linehouse. “We wanted each teahouse to read as a singular insertion and contrast strongly with the rawness of the existing building.”
The resulting scheme very much plays with the dichotomy of public and private space and the ways in which they can comfortably intersect. For Hickling and Mok, a big part of reinventing the traditional teahouse typology was to bring a sense of privacy to a ritual that is largely social. So the thirteen newly inserted rooms with shifting rooflines serve to disrupt the typical open-plan arrangement of many teahouses by ‘internalising’ the tea drinking experience. It’s a carefully choreographed outcome that respectfully accommodates the existing structural elements with a high degree of nuance.
Most striking are the stacked teahouses, which take full advantage of the interior’s height, allowing the upper rooms to connect with the original clerestory windows. These spaces are flooded with natural light and so it made good sense to bookend them with full-height glazing. In contrast, three of the lower-level rooms at the rear of the building are fully enclosed and the three that sit directly below the upper ones are clad in brushed darkened stainless steel, with a low glass datum.
“[This arrangement] allows guests to have a different perspective of the interior, depending on where they’re seated,” notes Hickling. “People sitting upstairs, for example, can look down at the groundlevel activities with an overarching view of their surroundings.” Furthermore, the selection of raised or floor-level seating in the lower-level pavilions allows for either privacy at eye height or a more expansive view out.
Significantly, the stacked scheme’s strong verticality, along with the clear zoning of the lower-level rooms, injects the interior with a degree of intimacy that belies its cavernous size. The variation adds dynamism to the offering, as well as being a cleverly executed marketing device that keeps customers coming back for more. It’s not hard to imagine someone requesting their ‘favourite booth’ time and again, while other people will be determined to try every room in the house.
The fit-out’s materiality is another of the design’s compelling expressions, lending Tingtai Teahouse an elegant yet slick aesthetic that doesn’t alienate, but rather would appeal to both young and old tea drinkers alike. Apart from the steel and glass, smoked oak clads the interiors of the thirteen rooms, making them appear even more warm and welcoming. But it’s the green terrazzo flooring – an on-trend material choice with undeniable retro charm – that’s hard to ignore.
It provides a pleasing counterpoint to the otherwise black, cream, grey and brown colour palette and also contributes an element of visual interest, pertinent in a busy location like Moganshan Road that’s become something of a cultural attraction among both locals and tourists. An open communal area on the ground level is used for events and exhibitions and while this reimagines the custom of teahouse entertainment, it also further embeds the establishment within its contemporary context. For all its Insta-appeal, this is a project that ultimately succeeds with a fine balance of old and new via an offering that’s satisfyingly familiar and unexpected, reverent and inventive.