nana’s green tea NAMBACITY
Osaka, Japan / 2015

“Ryurei”

Nanaha Co., Ltd. is a company that sends the “new form of Japan” to the world through “mattcha”. They provide high quality mattcha in menus that are arranged modernly, such as mattacha latte. The space inside the shop is desired to be a “modern tearoom”, not a “Japanese style tea room”. According to the owner, it is a way of expressing their feeling to make a shop that allows the customers to enjoy the traditional Japanese culture with a modern interpretation.

There is a variety of tea ceremony in which one sits on a chair while making the tea. The tea utensils like an iron tea ceremony pot or a water jug are placed on a table named Tencyaban. This style is called “Ryurei” and created by Urasenke so that foreign guests could enjoy comfortably at the beginning of the Meiji period (around 1870s).

Then I thought of creating the modern Ryurei style for modern people.

First of all, I designed a cubic chair that is 50 centimeters on a side and made of tatami and it became a movable floor (chair) by attaching casters.
Combining tatami chairs freely allows the space to have flexibility. When gathering all the tatami chairs, it appears a large tatami floor on which the guest even can do seiza (Japanese way of formal sitting on the tatami floor). When sitting on the tatami chair normally, the guest can enjoy the tea in Ryurei style.

In nana’s green tea Namba CITY, the guest might see a new style of the tearoom.

Photos by Keisuke Miyamoto