Having started on the design afresh, the first thing to do was to try to set out some guiding design principles and make some fundamental decisions on shape, size and materials. In doing so, I studied several websites documenting other tea house projects - notably My Japanese Teahouse - but in the end had to be true to my own design objectives.
Size
The tea house dimensions were effectively determined by the chosen location, set between two mature eucalyptus trees (see Build - footings and supports). This meant maximum wall dimensions of around 2.6m by 2m, allowing for generous eaves, plus a veranda about 0.6m deep. This also effectively constrained the overall height to around 2.8m in order to stay in proportion (but see below).
Roof
Clearly the most significant feature was going to be the roof. I was keen that the overall roof shape should as far as possible follow the style that I had seen on traditional structures in Kyoto - i.e. a hip-and-gable roof. This style, known as irimoya in Japan, was traditionally used for Buddhist temples but later became more widely used for all kinds of structure, including rustic buildings. However, it was also important to get the proportions right - in particular, gable height compared with overall roof height, and roof height compared with overall building height. I later realised that both of these should be approaching 50%, but unfortunately did not get this quite right in my design.
I also wanted the front eaves to be sufficiently wide to cover the veranda. Given the limited space available and not wanting to reduce the roof pitch (and hence overall height) any more than necessary, I decided to achieve this by setting the ridge further towards the rear.
An important related consideration was choice of roof cladding. Having already ruled out a thatched roof (although this is clearly the ideal), this was actually an easy decision since cedar shingles are still often used on traditional structures in Japan.
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