Architecture & Space– category –

Walk onto the rooftop of a major Tokyo department store today, and you’ll likely find one of two things: a chic beer garden with craft IPAs and artfully arranged string lights, or a serene, minimalist garden where people sit quietly on b...

Walk up to the veranda of a Zen temple in Kyoto, and you might be confronted with a sight that feels like a quiet riddle. Before you stretches a walled enclosure, not filled with blooming flowers or lush greenery, but with a flat expanse...

I was sitting on the polished wooden veranda of a temple in the hills of eastern Kyoto, the kind of place that doesn’t make it into the major guidebooks. It was late afternoon in autumn, and the air was crisp and smelled of damp earth an...

You’re standing in a Japanese garden, perhaps in Kyoto. It feels serene, meticulously composed, yet not entirely contained. Your eyes follow a line of carefully placed stones, past a sculpted pine tree, over a low, moss-covered wall, and...

If you spend any time traveling through the suburbs of a Japanese city, you’ll eventually see them. Rising from the landscape of tiled roofs and tangled telephone wires are clusters of uniform, concrete buildings, usually five stories hi...

You are standing on the wooden veranda of a small temple in the northern hills of Kyoto. The garden before you is simple, almost austere. It consists of meticulously raked white gravel, a few thoughtfully placed stones, and a low, clippe...

You're standing in a Japanese garden, perhaps in Kyoto. The air is still, filled only with the sound of trickling water and the rustle of maple leaves. Before you lies a meticulously arranged world: moss-covered stones placed with intent...

You've probably seen them if you've ever taken a train deep into the Japanese countryside. Tucked away in a mountain valley or looming over a forgotten stretch of coastline, you spot a massive, incongruous structure. It might look like a...

There’s a moment that happens in certain Japanese gardens. It’s a quiet click in the mind, a sudden recalibration of scale. You’ll be walking along a path of meticulously raked gravel, past carp gliding through a pond no bigger than a li...

Step into any Japanese home, and the first thing you’ll notice isn’t the furniture or the art on the walls. It’s the floor. Or rather, the sudden lack of it. Before you is a small, lowered area of stone or tile, and beyond it, a single, ...