Lake · Loren Lake Tea Space

Clear spring green tea, shared with two or three friends—half a day of leisure offsets ten years of dusty dreams. YI+MU Art Design and the Roland Lake owners spent the turbulent pandemic period of 2021 to 2023 together. The renovation and construction of the lakeside Roland Lake teahouse, after repeated delays, was finally completed. Upon opening, it immediately ranked first on social media teahouse lists. After extensive research on tea spaces, YI+MU constructed something between old and new tea culture: injecting a simple, free spirit and spirituality into the old building, reconnecting it with environment and time. Avoiding elaboration and excessive refinement, maintaining elegance and naturalness, the design lets people drink tea with ease and feels as warm and approachable as its name—by the lake. Ten years of the building: from decline to rebirth. When the building was handed to YI+MU, it was somewhat disconnected from the functional demands of a tea space—the site was sunken, clad in copper pipes, with dark volumes and low interiors. Within Lidu Garden's green space, the old building was like a slowly weathering stone, sinking into silence. In 2013, Italian designer Luca Nichetto completed this building as a furniture display space for Tales Story Hall. A decade later, the bright-to-dark atmospheric lineage was no longer appropriate, and its sharp, foreign manner needed a fitting transformation. The renovation reinterprets the building as a serene tea sanctuary, drawing on the simplicity and spirituality of traditional Chinese tea culture while maintaining a contemporary sensitivity to light, material, and landscape.