Located in the Chengdu region, it is proposed as an iconic building that allows the region to be placed on the national and international map and aims to bring visitors closer to the knowledge of the culture related to the cultivation and consumption of tea.
Historically, tea has been defined as the elixir that leads to love, art, perfection, and beauty. The project seeks to generate a sensory experience where the user, sheltered by a unique and sustainable architecture, and constantly surrounded by nature, is impregnated, thanks to state-of-the-art technological supports, with the Chinese tea culture.
Thus, the idea of the project revolves around 4 concepts: architectural iconicity, the concept of reflection, sustainability, and interactivity. On the other hand, the 5 Wu Xing elements have also been kept in mind; earth, fire, metal, wood, and water.
The museum is born from the earth, emerges from the ground and thanks to the energy of fire it melts the metal that is used to create the volume. The building is materialized with wood, an element that serves as a support to extend the tea plantation that surrounds the building above it, as a green roof, reinforcing the concept of sustainability. The last element comes into play through the arrangement of sheets of water that reflect the shape of the building.
The museum is divided into a set of 5 pavilions, connected to each other by sheets of water. The exit from any pavilion offers the possibility of contemplating the tea leaf that makes up the other pavilions. The project is therefore born from the same environment that surrounds it and completely merges with the tea plantations. Green roofs contribute to insulation and thermal inertia, as well as the reuse of rainwater.
As for the program, each pavilion works independently and has a different theme, although they all follow a similar organization. In total there are 5 pavilions: the tea exhibition and tasting pavilion, the socioeconomic pavilion, the brewing process pavilion, the auditorium pavilion, and the restaurant pavilion. The most significant part of the program is always placed on the ground floor, leaving the upper floor for more unique spaces. In these spaces, virtual reality and new technologies have been used in exhibition areas, in order to position the building as a world reference in terms of technology.

• Date: 2020
• Area: 70000 m²
• Stage: Preliminary design
• Location: Ya’an, China