Japanese Teahouse Kanshoan

This guide to the Japanese Teahouse Kanshoan in Munich opens in April 1972, when a small wooden house arrived quietly on an island in the Englischer Garten, months before the same park would draw the world's attention for a very different reason that summer. It follows the gift from Kyoto's Urasenke tea school, designed by grand master Sen Soshitsu the fifteenth with architect Mitsuo Nomura to mark the Olympic Games and Munich's twinning with Sapporo, and the association he sent to keep the tea ceremony alive here for decades. Look closely at the sliding doors and the deliberate lines of its sukiya-zukuri carpentry, built for one purpose: to slow you down.