at LIXIL gallery in tokyo, an exhibition unveils the first artisanal furniture collection created in collaboration between cultural entrepreneur and designer adrian cheng and master designer and craftsman shigeru uchida. from now through october 28, ‘wander from within’ explores the role of furniture in breaking physical connections to daily life, and ‘channelling the mind to live in the ephemeral, singular moment far from the ordinary’. a collection of five objects and a tea room seek to investigate the definition of space, as well as the important relationship between man and nature.

within LIXIL gallery, visitors find a tea room. shigeru uchida designed three tea houses, each bearing a different structural form. built from bamboo with a japanese paper lining, the small-scale rooms can be dismantled and re-assembled in different locations. this tea room was where adrian cheng and shigeru uchida held their final design meeting.

ritualistically, the relationships surrounding the tea ceremony begins on the ‘roji’, or path in a garden, where guests put aside their worries. the location of the actual ceremony was not always a room or a house originally, but simply a demarcated realm — the historical form of the tea room developed in the 15th century from the tatami room.