Section
Traditional
Shrines, temples, villas and townhouses — the deep grammar of building in Japan.
Ise Jingu: The Shrine That Is Rebuilt Every Twenty Years
For more than a thousand years, Japan's most sacred shrine has been dismantled and rebuilt in fresh cypress. What does it mean for a building to be both ancient and new?
Katsura Imperial Villa and the Art of the Sukiya Style
A seventeenth-century princely retreat in Kyoto that taught twentieth-century modernists a lesson about restraint.
From other sections
Church of the Light: How Tadao Ando Built with Shadow
A modest chapel in suburban Osaka turned a cross-shaped slit in a concrete wall into one of the most recognisable images in modern architecture.
After Nakagin: What Metabolism Still Teaches Us
Kisho Kurokawa's capsule tower was demolished in 2022. Its ideas about growth, change and replaceable parts are more relevant than ever.
Engawa: The Beauty of the Space In Between
Neither inside nor outside, the wooden veranda of the Japanese house is a lesson in thresholds.
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