Griffith Park Tea House

In July 2015, a group of guerilla artists built a tea house at the top of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. The city removed it after only a few weeks. A Beard & Glasses 360° production. 

“Planned in secrecy, prefabricated off-site, and erected under the cover of darkness in just a single night, a group of anonymous artists eschewed traditional city permitting to construct this idyllic mountain-top retreat. With a semi-open architecture, the Tea House uses negative space to frame the Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains in the distance and offers visitors a small oasis of shade on the otherwise exposed hillside. The entryway is emblazoned with a half-mountain lion, half-eagle creature, bearing P-22’s distinctive tracking collar.

Built from salvaged wood from the 2007 Griffith Park wildfire and constructed on top of a preexisting concrete footprint, the artist group attempted to minimize impact on the natural surroundings. Despite a generally warm reception of the installation, calls for its removal were being made by park officials within hours of its unveiling. [The] structure’s transiency is very much a part of its charm. In line with the Japanese aesthetic principal of wabi-sabi, true beauty is found in the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete. Or more simply expressed: ‘Nothing lasts forever, so enjoy it while it’s here.’” – Aether Apparel

LAist: “People are doing some pretty cool stuff with virtual reality these days.”