Commence the Tatami Laying!

Now that I've actually got a space to work with, its time to lay down the flooring. At first I was going to place another piece of foamcore at the bottom, but it had too much height to it that it didn't look good forming against the walls, thus I decided to go with cardstock.

Taped some coloured pieces of paper for the tatami mats,
trial run on laying them down for now, make sure them all
fall into place. Also added the extra foamcore at the
Tokonoma, it is elevated in all the iamges I have seen. 

Laid down a piece of cardstock as flooring,
everything looks good so far.

Setting up all the walls!

 After I dwelling on my feelings of accomplishment, I proceeded to set up all the walls. Thank goodness for my trusty sidekick, Wellbond glue - what would I do without you?

Some of the doors/windows need to form against
the groove so that it slides smoothly - keep sliding them!

Setting up the walls in the middle of foamcore land.

All the walls are up!

Do they slide?

Who new making miniature Japanese sliding doors would be so hard? The most difficulty part was cutting out the individual squares in the foamcore and placing a piece of tracing paper in between. All for the sake of a look of authenticity! I came to realize how chubby my fingers were after this.

Two of the sliding doors completed, lain outside while I make
 the grooves on the inside of the foamcore. 

Squares so small....can barely cut straight..!

Do they slide? Yes they do!

The nijiriguchi barely slides, I had such a hard
time!

Sliding Foamcore Doors (and Windows)

 One thing that I was really determined to accomplish in the model was to make sure my doors and windows were actually operational. I wanted my sliding doors to actually slide, so I had done some research beforehand on how they may work. Some of them mechanisms were more difficult to implement in my model because it is smaller to work with, however I found out that using grooves in the foamcore may work. 

My research on grooves of sliding doors consists of  the
use of Google images

Trial run with tape, do these walls work?
(Apparently not, had to cut down on some
measurements)

Walls Everywhere!

 Craning my neck to look at reference images of walls in the book and what I am working on gets quite tiring, but I keep telling myself they're only walls. This book makes it much easier with the details of the walls all laid out, all I need to do is follow the measurements, drawing the lines over the foamcore with pencil before cutting them with an X acto knife.

Pictures of the interiors of several
teahouses so I don't have to play the
guesing game. 

Lineing the walls before cutting them to make sure the right
angles are maintained. 

The framing of the walls are made with two pieces of foamcore strips glued together while the inner wall piece is only one piece of foamcore insertedd in the middle. This defines the difference in structure.

Laid out the walls against the base framing to
make sure of the measurements. 

Foamcore Galore

 If there is one thing I hate about working with foamcore, its how messy it gets - bits and pieces flying everywhere. While using the previous foundation images as reference, here I have begun to create the base of the teahouse using long foamcore pieces (doubled up, using glue to make it sturdier). The difficulty in this part was making sure the measurements remained changed for the perfect square in the centre. It is important to keep with the right angles, otherwise is would prove to be difficult in the end when tatami mats are inserted.

Near complete base, the extension at the top will
form the Tokonoma

Under the square here, is the early planning for
the mizuya

Teahouse Foundation Planning

Starting off with the layout, I had intended my teahouse model to be small, thus I chose a 4.5 tatami mat layout. After alot of reasearch, I found a building plan to work off of from one of the books I had borrowed from the East Asian Studies library. The layout I chose is quite simple, with a tokonoma and a mizuya.

This is an image of the teahouse apart of a
 larger complex.

Images of the walls of the teahouse, including
measurements. 

Some foundation images I had found online, there were not a lot of foundation details in the books, mostly about layouts. This was my starting point to the construction, the structure of the model is important in determining how sturdy the teahouse will be afterwards.

The attaching of the beams is very detailed, but I'm
likely to employ easier methods with foamcore.

Process of Planning

To start on this project, I first headed to the East Asian studies library and picked up a few books on traditional teahouses. The difficulty of this task was trying to find the specific books I needed on construction and not tourist attractions or of historical significance. Most of these books were written in Japanese, thus it took a bit of effort to interpret the construction images and their captions. 

Very useful books on elements of construction
I was lucky to find.

If I had more time, I would have attempted
to put my teahouse on a lake?

Next thing to do is to gather the necessary materials and tools: foamcore, coloured paper, tracing paper, plastic sheeting, rulers, X-acto knife, tape, white museum board. 

Introduction: Creative Project

Hello to those of you who may have come across this blog :) This blog is devoted to the creation of a Japanese Chashitsu (Teahouse) model (in a scale of 1:50) out of primarily foamcore for the Creative Project Assignment for EAS378: Edo,Osaka & Kyoto.   

Japanese Chashitsu played a predominant role in the Tokugawa era for not only being a place for entertainment and conversation, but also representative of what changes in time has brought about changing in the meaning of space the traditional Japanese Teahouse serves. Before the flourishing of businesses in the Genroku period, teahouses served as spaces of meditation and concentration, primarily isolated in an area surrounded by elements of nature. The expansion of entertainment districts the use of spaces for entertainment purposes had brought the traditional teahouse into the city and had given it a whole different meaning 

For this project, the teahouse I will be building is a kumo style, where the main layout is constructed of fewer than 4.5 tatami mats. This is a model of an early teahouse, and not that of the city; however it shows a general layout of what elements are included in the interior. Teahouses of the city would have several of these  rooms merged together at a larger scale.  

A traditional teahouse set in a background of greenery
(Source: 茶座作法)