The owners of a typical suburban property required their back garden to become habitable in some way as the existing house had isolated itself by presenting a completely blank wall to the garden. The teahouse was therefore designed as a fly-screened pavilion, dynamically angled in one corner of the garden, that activates it by introducing a multi-purpose space with built-in seating serviced by a workbench with sink. The additional facility of a mezzanine sleeping loft, accessible by ladder, was formed in the attic to create an open porch below and in front of the fly-screened space.

The teahouse was also designed around pre-purchased timber which had to be treated as found elements and which added a further challenge to it’s design. The roof was treated as a prototypical convection plenum without insulation but instead utilising the cavities by offsetting reflective foil by attaching it to the back of the ceiling lining.