La
Biennale di Venezia: Le Stanze del Vetro - Hiroshi Sugimoto. The “Glass Tea House Mondrian” is a temporary
pavilion designed by the Japanese artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto as
part of the activities of Le Stanze del Vetro on the Island of San Giorgio
Maggiore. Hiroshi Sugimoto is known worldwide for his black-and-white
photographs, and for the first time ever he designed an architectural building
in Venice.
Glass Tea House Mondrian. Glass Tea House Mondrian is inspired by pre-modern abstraction, as perfected by
Sen no Rikyu, in the Japanese tradition of the tea ceremony. The Pavilion
consists of two main elements, an open-air landscape and
an enclosed glass cube. The landscape follows a path along a reflecting
pool leading the visitor to a glass cube, inside which the traditional
Japanese tea ceremony will be performed regularly.
Glass
Tea House Mondrian. Inspired by the Ise-shrine, the exterior fence around the
pavilion is made entirely of cedar wood and realized through a contribution by
Sumitomo Forestry Co. Ltd. Hiroshi Sugimoto and Sumitomo Forestry chose the
cedar wood from the Tohoku region for their commitment in helping to
reconstruct areas which were devastated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and
tsunami.