Ellie told me that there’s a Machiya transported to the Boston Children’s Museum. I found on the website images where it looked like ‘Alice in Wonderland’. This Machiya has been taken apart in Kyoto and was rebuild by Japanese carpenters in the museum (1979-1980). In an interview in the Harvard Magazine Yukio Lippit (professor in the humanities) says: “You can really only understand a Japanese building by taking it apart.†I don’t know whether a Lees verder
Culture reveals itself slowly. Every day you see new things, although your eye must have seen them before. Only when you make connections, references, relationships you can communicate and understand better the things you’ve seen. This first week is a great lesson in modesty and slow looking.
Kenya Hara states in his ‘house vision’ that the form of the sliding doors are more determined by the body than by the space. It’s the mentality that lives in a space that allows one to engage with the world with beauty and modest dignity. How to open and close the sliding doors, walk, stand and sit on the tatami-mat floor. How can we combine this way of thinking for the Machiya? Where current residents Lees verder
In the japanese house you have an alcove (tokonoma) where art pieces, flowers, a paper roll or other objects of art are arranged. I read that the most important person in a meeting is sitting most closely to the alcove with his back towards it. Than I realized that the first day I arrived this has happened in the house: I got this place. Later when I went to a lunchroom to meet someone, I Lees verder
The Katsura Imperial Villa was completed in 1615. Prince Toshihito and later his son prince Toshitada erected several constructions and an impressive garden. Through the ‘windows’ you have totally different views on the gardens. Not only related to the vegetation but alto to the time of the day and the season. By opening and closing the sliding doors (fusuma and shoji) you could devide rooms, change views and regulate the climate inside. All rooms have Lees verder
Although my research is not on mapping Kyoto, I want to share my fascination for maps, especially in Japan. The marking of land (different trees, agriculture), water (river, lake, moving water), hills (unfolded) and temples (shrine and temple complex) are so accurate and beautiful. The whole image explains on different levels the city and its surrounding. Everything is in the right composition, relevant and clear. This map i saw this afternoon, after a 30 minutes Lees verder
I visited with Birgit (an architect working in Delft, who’s also invited by the KCCC) some Machiya. Now I start to recognize the structure and similarities in the houses: levels, mapping (everything according to the size of the tatami), materials, garden and ways of use (see map below with my first general view on the Machiya). All the four Machiya I entered today, have a public function: restaurant, bar, gallery or meeting place. They were Lees verder
I met some people from the organizing institutions and they told me that it would be difficult to find inhabitants willing to open their Machiya for me to show me their house, give an interview and to allow me taking photographs. It’s strange that although inside there’s nearly no privacy because of the paper walls, the exterior of the houses is very dark and closed, you can’t look inside or even dare to open a Lees verder
This morning I met one of the neighbors. He explained me very gently when and how to open and close the sliding doors* in the house. Places we share, places where he could see me (‘you’re a woman’) when and how to open or close them. I will show you the sliding doors of my part of the house(s). black are walls, red are the sliding doors, grey is my place, green is the couryard. Lees verder
After 11 hours by plain (7 hours forward in time) and nearly any sleep I got a warmhearted welcome from the people from the KCCC, the Doshisha University and the owners of the house. My apartment is big and full of things from the family: some traditional (photographs from the family, paper rolls, low tables, but … also a big television screen, western table and old-fashioned chairs, an inkpainting from a cathedral drawn with musicnotes. Lees verder