During the two weeks I’m in Kyoto I try to figure out why there’s such a big gap between tradition and modernity in every aspect of life in Kyoto/Japan. Sometimes reading Alex Kerr (Lost Japan or Dog and Demons) helps me understanding this incredible lack of beauty of traditional crafts in modern life. But reading this makes me very depressive about the future of this country. Today, although it was raining almost all day long, Lees verder
Through our eyes we can look and observe the world around us. Sometimes we use a painting, filmscreen or photo to focus on what we should see and avoid the noise around it. Three years ago I saw the work of Job Koelewijn at de Pont Tilburg. He put a container at the entrance. You could go inside and sit on own of the cinema seats. You were looking through a big hole that looked Lees verder
Taniguchi (professor at the Doshisha University) explained me one of the first days about living in a traditional japanese house. In a traditional house everything in life is takes place in the same room: day: living, eating, sleeping, all in one room year: summer, autumn, winter, spring (with differences in the garden and in the shutters) lifetime: birth ceremony, marriage, funeral all took place in the same house. Now we have in a modern japanese Lees verder
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