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The Garden as Architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea ReviewThe highest compliment which I can pay to a book is to say that it has a place in my "Desert Island" library - that is to say that if I were to find myself stranded on an island and could only have a few books on a given subject, this would be one of them. The Garden as Architecture is such a book; it is fascinating, well-written and profusely illustrated, and is lucid enough to be enjoyable the first time but sufficiently rich and complex in it's material that it continues to yield additional insights after repeated re-readings.It consists of a cross-cultural comparison of the relationships between architecture and the adjacent outdoor spaces, in the traditional cultures of Japan, China and Korea. I use the term "outdoor space" rather than "garden" because the author makes the point that these 3 cultures differ significantly in the use and meaning which they give to these spaces, which use of the word garden for all 3 does not adequately convey.The section on Japanese gardens and architecture is somewhat longer than the Chinese and Korean sections; it alone is worth the price of the book. The author describes the evolution of residential and temple architecture (starting with Heian-period Shinden style estates and proceeding thru the Shoin and Sukiya styles of the medieval and Edo periods) as well as the changes which occurred in the adjacent gardens. He shows that architecture and the gardens appear to have changed together as part of a mutually-dependant co-evolution, rather than having evolved independently of one another. For example, he describes how as a result of changes in the design of the shutters (shitomido), doors (mairado), and shoji screens used to screen the exterior from the interior of the building, the views of the garden were dramatically altered over time, which influenced the design of the garden. Elsewhere he argues that the south dry-landscape gardens of the Zen temples and the pond-and-hill gardens of warrior residences both evolved from the same prototypical Heian-period Shinden south garden by a process in which certain elements of the latter were emphasized (while others were condensed or retained only by implication rather than explicitly), with the later gardens differing from each other by what was chosen for emphasis. This is a fascinating idea because it is very similar to the process of idealization and abbreviation which many authors have used to describe the relationship between the Japanese garden and the larger natural landscape.The sections on Chinese and Korean gardens are more concerned with the influence of geographic/climatic and social factors than they are with their evolution over time. I'm not sufficiently versed in these subjects to comment on them except to note that the material in these sections is equally interesting, and concerns a subject about which little has been published in English compared with the volume of material on the Japanese garden & architecture. Since the Chinese and Japanese gardens were strongly influenced by Taoism and Zen respectively, the differences between them provide a degree of insight into the contrasting philosophies of these two religions. I have only one minor complaint concerning this book. The numbering of the illustrations is complex and at times confusing, and they are widely separated from the text which discuses them with distressing frequency - expect to be flipping the pages a lot. On a final note, you will get the most out of this book if you already have some familiarity (from more introductory sources) with the subjects covered. The illustrations are all in black & white, so a good large format color book (e.g. by Marc Keane or Teiji Itoh) on Japanese gardens would make an excellent companion, while the visual and spatial arguments in this book can be appreciated more deeply after having worked thru David Slawson's "Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens" (which is also in my "Desert Island" library).The Garden as Architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea OverviewWant to learn more information about The Garden as Architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea?
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