Teacup architecture

I found a great quote about architecture by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the tea cup, but the tea.

This resonates nicely for me in what I want my architecture to do and be. Personal, subtle, enhancing the experience. (Especially if one takes it from a Japanese standpoint, where the container, or packaging, is extremely carefully thought out and the experience of it is highly developed and cultivated.)

For obvious reasons, one cannot have tea without a container to drink it from. In the same way, architecture has a utility function- it is difficult if not impossible to have a house, a school, a store, or court without some kind of built environment- it not directly related to the function of its use, then at least to mitigate rain and temperature. But the teacup does more than hold tea.

One of Monty Python's four Yorkshiremen, in the famous sketch of how poor they were when they were young, talked about drinking tea out of a rolled up newspaper. Another replied he had to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

The teacup gives character to the experience of drinking the tea. I don't care if you're drinking the most luxurious expensive tea at the Raffles Hotel, if you're drinking out of a cracked, dirty cup, it's an  impoverished experience.

I want my tea cup to provide the best tea drinking experience. I don't care if people notice the teacup. People don't drink tea to put their hands and lips on pieces of ceramic. In the same way, people don't live to experience architecture- they experience architecture in order to live.

And yet, there is so much room to experiment, to play. Look at the varieties of tea cups around the world. They all do their job, but they all put a quiet nuance on this or that aspect of drinking tea.

However, it is not that useful as an operative theory of architecture.