Sixteenth-century Katsura Detached Palace | Japan
The buildings, and to a lesser extent the gardens, of Katsura became influential to a number of well known modernist architects in the 20th century via a book produced by Bruno Taut. Le Corbusier and especially Walter Gropius, who visited in 1953, found inspiration in the minimal and orthogonal design. Subsequently, Katsura become well known to a second wave of architects from Australia such as Philip Cox, Peter Muller and Neville Gruzman who visited in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The impact of traditional japanese culture on John Pawson, a contemporary architect.
John Pawson is usually associated with minimalism, which can be seen as the western version of the tenets of Japanese traditional art. Minimalism is viewed as a reductionist art: clear simple forms, a subdued palette of colours, special attention for sophisticated but simplistic details, and thereby creating a void, an atmosphere for contemplation. Many artists, like Donald Judd, who associate themselves with the minimalist style, are merely concerned with a reduction in form, not colour or contemplation. Judd, for instance, even makes use of bright neon lights.
Pawson, therefore, instead of calling himself a minimalist, would rather say that he was greatly inspired by masters in this kind of reductionist architecture like Mies van der Rohe, Shiro Kumamoto, Luis Barragan and by traditional Japanese architecture. If he could have the choice, he would love to live in sixteenth-century Japan:
“Sitting in the Katsura Palace, looking over the moonviewing lake, with traditional cake and tea, is a distillation of everything that attracts me to simplicity. Nothing is wrong, not one thing, the table, the tray, the view, the lake, the process of getting there, and than of leaving again. Everything is perfect.”
Sixteenth-century Katsura Detached Palace | Japan
The buildings, and to a lesser extent the gardens, of Katsura became influential to a number of well known modernist architects in the 20th century via a book produced by Bruno Taut. Le Corbusier and especially Walter Gropius, who visited in 1953, found inspiration in the minimal and orthogonal design. Subsequently, Katsura become well known to a second wave of architects from Australia such as Philip Cox, Peter Muller and Neville Gruzman who visited in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The impact of traditional japanese culture on John Pawson, a contemporary architect.
John Pawson is usually associated with minimalism, which can be seen as the western version of the tenets of Japanese traditional art. Minimalism is viewed as a reductionist art: clear simple forms, a subdued palette of colours, special attention for sophisticated but simplistic details, and thereby creating a void, an atmosphere for contemplation. Many artists, like Donald Judd, who associate themselves with the minimalist style, are merely concerned with a reduction in form, not colour or contemplation. Judd, for instance, even makes use of bright neon lights.
Pawson, therefore, instead of calling himself a minimalist, would rather say that he was greatly inspired by masters in this kind of reductionist architecture like Mies van der Rohe, Shiro Kumamoto, Luis Barragan and by traditional Japanese architecture. If he could have the choice, he would love to live in sixteenth-century Japan:
“Sitting in the Katsura Palace, looking over the moonviewing lake, with traditional cake and tea, is a distillation of everything that attracts me to simplicity. Nothing is wrong, not one thing, the table, the tray, the view, the lake, the process of getting there, and than of leaving again. Everything is perfect.”