Body-Mind Unity as a Dominant Design Philosophy of Traditional Japanese Tea-House

Despite a current fascination with East Asian iconography such as Zen Style among contemporary designers, there is a lack of genuine cross-cultural discourse that could enable us to share essential design experiences. To bring the discussion a deeper level, traditional Japanese tea-house in its design philosophy of body-mind interplay is explored. Tea-house is a superb manifestation to reveal a holistic understanding of the world. Nondualistic realization is generally associated with the dominant tendency of traditional East Asian philosophy, namely the view that the self and environment, and that the mind and the body exist in unity. The essence of tea-house is not in its poetic style or meticulous details, but in its unmistakably monistic approach of creating inseparable form, function and meaning. Tea-house bestows dignity upon restraint, imperfection, discomfort, poverty, and even humility. This concept offers a tremendous insight since it implies that the rational and effective design solution to the greatest degree is not sufficient. Perhaps the most challenging question about tea-house is: How does our experience with human-made 'design' in the broadest sense help both our body and mind attain a full harmony of being? It is the heading which this research inquires.