nana’s green tea SEATTLE (USA)
Seattle, USA / 2018

“Contemporary tea house”

Nanaha is a company that sends to the world “a new shape of Japan” by introducing various perspectives to look at drinking matcha – Japanese powdered green tea.
It offers, through modernly arranged menu, a high quality matcha such as matcha latte and so on. Thus, as the owner of the store expressed himself: “ I want to create a store where people can enjoy a traditional Japanese tea culture in a modern sophisticated way”, a desired shop space was designed to reflect not “Japanese style interior” but a contemporary tea room.

The tea room is a special place. In order to enter it one needs to cleanse and purify their hands in tsukubai, a stone washbasin usually found in Japanese gardens, that acts as a spiritual barrier. Before reaching tea room, it is said that one has to walk on the stepping stones which means crossing over, several times, the mountain passes. Likewise, bamboo forest plays a prologue-like part not only in everyday life but also in such an extraordinary space like tea room. Having said that, tea room is a holly space that it is separated from the real world.

By embracing all of the elements of tea room that can create the interior shop, we tried to reproduce a ‘wabisabi’ style expressed by Rikyu into a modern tea room.

Designed by Masahiro Yoshida and Daiki Sakai