Ebook: The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture

A serious book for anyone with an interest in the architecture of the Japanese house. A complex book with great substance. An introduction by Walter Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus movement and pioneers of modern architecture, deems the importance of this book as a major contribution of bridging the gap between Western and Eastern approaches to architecture. The aut...

A serious book for anyone with an interest in the architecture of the Japanese house. A complex book with great substance. An introduction by Walter Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus movement and pioneers of modern architecture, deems the importance of this book as a major contribution of bridging the gap between Western and Eastern approaches to architecture. The author in his preface writes of the alienation and "emotional indifference to the forms created by science and technique." Japanese residential architecture, as a result, holds "instructive comparisons." Mentioned were four important unique and successful ways the architecture served important needs: an "intimate emotional relationship;" aesthetic meaning as a "pure expression of necessity"; "humanization"; and, "established an accord between feeling and thinking." Following are an important introduction by the author. The table of contents is organized in four parts: Structure, Organism, Environment, and Aesthetics. Subsections include such things as: fabric, design, family, space, garden, philosophy, society, taste, order and expression. Illustrations, an epigram, a bibliography and index complete the description of the tome.