A Portable Tea House | Boano Prismontas

Boano Prišmontas worked closely with TwentyFour Solar to create a bespoke Portable Tea House to showcase their quality Chinese tea blends and narrate their unique tea serving rituals, inspired by the Japanese tradition. 

The project aims to offer a new vision for contemporary tea makers. 

The Portable Tea House is a movable and temporary design solution that adapts to the contemporary lifestyle, without compromising on the quality and ritual of tea. TwentyFour Solar’s unique tea crafting process, colours and flavours are the necessary elements, which create continuity with the East Asian tea tradition and offer a rich tasting experience. 

TwentyFour Solar produces cold brews as well as hot teas. The two processes are very different and the portable tea house offers a movable setting for enjoying both. 

The Portable Tea House is comprised of two elements, one modular display counter to showcase the tea tins, and one suspended unit to host the cold brew tea bottles. The choice of materials used is a key aspect of the project. Birch plywood gives a natural yet contemporary look, and the oxidized copper counter together with copper pipe structure establish a symbolic link to the oxidation process of the cold brew teas while evoking the character of a traditional tea factory. 

Only a few elements are necessary for a tea ritual. The serving cups, neatly laid out on the countertop, are hosted in dedicated pockets to keep their arrangement in perfect position. The gaiwan - a traditional lidded bowl without handles used for the infusion of tea leaves - sits instead on an elevated copper plinth to highlight its central importance. The tea is contained in either the cold brew bottles or in a hot teapot positioned on the countertop, where a subtle groove hides a sink, collecting any spilt water.

The tins are set in the shelves, which serve the purpose of both offering and displaying the products. The cut-out curved profile is tailored around the exact shape of the tea tins and creates the motif of the whole design. The light balances and scoops on the intermittently curved counter, defining and describing its look with harmonious elegance. The design is a functional and self-buildable system which, according to each specific event, can be rearranged into multiple different configurations. 

A Portable Tea House has been exhibited at London Coffee Festival 2019