Hiroshi Sugimoto is a celebrated chronicler of the monotonous, the frozen and the familiar. He has photographed seascapes, modernist buildings and wax figures of famous people. But the 66-year-old Tokyo artist, who maintains a second studio in Chelsea, where he sat down with a reporter last month, also has a deep feeling for the ritualized performances of his homeland. He has produced and directed his own versions of the traditional Japanese puppet theater called bunraku, and the building he designed for his multidisciplinary Odawara Art Foundation in Japan will have a noh theater stage perched 100 meters above the sea when it opens in 2016.

On Friday, Mr. Sugimoto unveils a teahouse at Le Stanze del Vetro, a museum on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. In this glass cube set over a tiled pool, the traditional tea ceremony will be performed for the public. The project is the first in a series of temporary artist-designed structures at the museum and will be on view during the Venice Architecture Biennale. (This interview was edited and condensed.)

Q. You’re known for photographing architectural monuments, among other subjects. But lately, you’ve taken to architecture yourself. Why?

A. I’m a consumer of space in museums. To design my own shows, I have to be able to make floor plans and wall plans. So I trained myself how to make architectural drawings a long time ago.