The Initial Design

During the Summer of 2004, David produced the initial set of drawings of the tea house design. The first picture below shows the plan view of the entire property, with the location of the tea house along the back wall. The entrance stairs can be seen on the left side, and the two thick lines are the steel beams from which the structure is "hanging". The tea house is meant to be approached from the rear, so a path along the right side around the back will be used.
The solid body drawing below shows the outer shell and steel trusses from which the tea house will be "hanging". The large opening in the front is not an entrance but rather a set of double doors that can be opened during good weather and for use of the tea-house as a stage, to put on concerts.




The transparent drawing below shows some of the inner structure that will hold the building together. It is essentially two steel frames, for the roof and the floor, held together by a series of steel rods. The structure was built in Henry Kawa's machine shop in such a way that it can be disassembled and carried to the installation site.



The end view reveals that, the tea-house will not strictly be hanging from the steel beams, but in fact has a very small base at the center. However, the rods tying the roof to the beams is essential because this small foundation could not really support the structure, particularly in high winds. More about the engineering testing later. The base will also house coils for the heat pump.







The top view shows the location of the foundation at the center and some of the internal roof structure.The front view gives a better idea of the relative sizes of the beams and the tea-house itself. The roof design consists of a diamond shape, which is inverted in the ceiling.


These are some of the basic ideas of the design. From this point much work was needed to complete the details, along with structural analysis. And of course the big issue would be the price, and getting a contract signed. We had no idea how hard this last issue would be.

The concert

On May 29, 2004, we put on a concert/dinner at our house for about 35 people. Since this is one of the uses we plan for the tea house, we invited David Jameson and his family so that he could get some ideas of how we might use it. We hoped that David would get some ideas for the tea house design. We were particularly interested in a way to use it as a concert stage, so that we could put on outdoor concerts. The concert featured music of Mozart and Gershwin:




And the dinner featured food from around the world:






So now we just needed to wait and see how David would put this all together to come up with something really new and differerent.

An initial series of emails - the prefab idea

At the first meeting we discussed the idea of having the tea house fabricated off site and carried to our house either in pieces, or even intact. David said he liked the idea of lifting it on a crane over the house.... Very dramatic. After the first meeting we continued our discussion by email.

Dec. 2. 2003


Sara and Andy,
I really enjoyed meeting you last week to discuss your project. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

The teahouse is very intriguing and I believe would be a fun and challenging project given it's constraints. Our typical fee for projects under 300k is 21% of construction cost. In thinking more about your project I would image we could do the same type of fee on your project since it would not entail a lot of systems work. For your review I have attached a sample agreement for services. Let me know your thoughts.

As I mentioned in our meeting I believe we could move your project into our workload early next year and run it concurrent with some larger projects. The idea of hoisting it over the house was even more interesting to me once I drove by your home during daylight hours.

Talk to you soon.

Best,
David
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Dec. 2 2003

David,

We are glad to know you are interested in the project.
We'll study the contract this week and will have some
questions by the end of the week.

Andy and Sara

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Dec. 3, 2003 (from David Jameson)

sounds good
I met yesterday with Henry Kawa from RKI millwork in Rockville. He is building the bronze/mahogany windows at the Glenbrook Road project. He seemed very interested in my idea of building much of the project in a shop and bringing it to the site.
We'll see....

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An exchange about the details of the contract (red lettering is David Jameson)
Dec. 6, 2004

Andy and Sara,

Thanks for getting back to me. I have noted some responses to your questions below. Please review and get back to me and I'll put together a final Agreement to send to you. Could you also send me address w/zip.

Best,

David

> David,
>
> We have read the contract and do have some questions
> and small additions:
>
> 1. It's our understanding that you (the principal
> architect) will do all of the design work, and that
> staff or project architects involvement would be
> primarily for carrying out some of the drawing. Also,
> any meetings would be with the principal architect as
> well. You are correct that I will do the design work. I will also attend the meetings that pertain to design issues as well as most others. The project architect will also attend many of the meetings and may meet with the contractor without my being there.
>
> 2. One concern is that the bids would come in much
> higher than anticipated. In order for that not to occur late in the process we typically will show the schematic deign drawings and design development drawings to contractor for pricing input at the earliest stages. Many times at that stage we select a GC to negotiate a price for the project and work with them/you to keep the project on track budget wise.In that case there are two
> possibilities, to stop the project at that point, or
> to delay it until further funds (or lower bids) can be
> obtained. We would assume that all work to that point
> would be retained by your firm, even if it is for a
> period of several years. We retain records of all projects for 7years We would assume that your
> fees to that point would be based on the agreed budget
> to that point and not on bids that have not been
> accepted (even if they are higher). You are correct- our billing is only on the most recently approved budget as noted in the payment area of the Agreement .The contract is
> not clear on this issue and a sentence to that effect
> would be helpful. We are also assuming that we would
> have the right to bring in contractors that we have
> found independently to bid as well. If you have a contractor that you would like us to talk to that is great. I don't believe the contract specifies you have to use a GC we bring in.Can this also be
> included in the contract.
>
> 3. The reimbursable expenses that would pertain to
> this project are not really clear. We know that it
> would include the permit application fee. Does it also
> include every copy of blueprints made for contractor
> bids and for the permit process (for example). yes- other expenses might be structural engineering, model supplies, courier/ mailing, etc. Since your project is quite small there would typically not be too much in the way of reimbursable expenses.
>
> We look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Sara and Andy

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Monday, April 5, 2004 6:26 PM

From:

"David Jameson Architect"

Hope all is well. I plan to come out later this week to check the tree blooms/ spring views.

I remember you being about 6-1 in height. A question I am working through is what ceiling height makes sense for the teahouse space- considering much of the time you will be seated on the floor. I think it might be nice to keep the ceiling low and intimate while seated but need to make sure the space is flexible and pragmatic for other uses. Any thoughts?

David Jameson

Contacting the Architect

On Nov. 20, 2003, we sent the following e-mail to David Jameson

> Mr. Jameson,
>
> We would like to discuss with you the possibility
> of designing a modern "tea house" for our residence
> in Bethesda. We have noticed some of your work in the
> neighborhood, and like your design approach for
> fitting modern design into traditional neighborhoods.
> We would like to build a modern version of the
> traditional Japanese teahouse, which could extend
> the connection between the living and garden spaces
> on our property.
>
> We look forward to hearing from you.


To which we received a very prompt response by telephone. We met at our home on November 25, 2003. We outlined the requirements for the project, which included the following:

1. A single room building of roughly 125 sq feet.
2. Simple clean lines
3. Ample light
4. Some allusion to the traditional Japanese tea house
5. The building should appear somewhat transparent, yet not really see through to the Neighbors houses.
6. Some feeling or illusion of floating.
7. Some hidden storage for gardening tools and bicycles would be useful
8. Year round functionality, so that it should be heated and cooled.
9. Flexible usage of the space, including dining and music performance.

We also gave him some of the photos that appear in the earlier posts, to give some idea of the direction we were thinking. We agreed to meet again in the very near future.

Finding an architect

So how do we find an architect to build our tea house? It really needs to be someone local, but the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC are not exactly a hotbed of modern architecture. We've taken many walks around Bethesda, where many of the 60 or 70 year old colonial revival houses are being torn down. They are commonly replaced by something like this:



Not very interesting or inspiring. It is very out of character and scale of the neighborhood (though I suppose this might change eventually if all the new houses look like this). But we did find a few interesting houses. The house below was being built about 10 years ago:



What is unique about this house is it's reference to the existing neighborhood, while incorporating clean modern lines. The roof-line is reminiscent of the old "Lock houses" along the C&O canal. But by the time we were thinking about the tea house, this project had been finished for 5 years, and we had no idea who the architect was. But another, even larger scale project was gong up just a few blocks away:


We watched this project from the very beginning, and saw all the details that went into it, including the steel frame, and soaring roof-line and glass walls. It is really a stone, glass and steel house, and has many of the elements we were looking for. And this construction site even had the name of the architect: David Jameson. A quick search on google revealed that this was the same architect who built the Modern Lock House above as well. So we decided to contact this David Jameson, and see if we could convince him to work on a much smaller project.