Fake Designs of Japanese Architecture challenges the received idea that medieval Japanese wooden buildings achieve a natural unity of structure and space, arguing instead that this harmony is a deliberate and layered illusion constructed across centuries of pre-modern building practice.
About This Book
What appears as organic coherence in Japan's medieval temples and wooden structures may in fact be a carefully staged relationship between surface and support — between what is seen and what holds things up. This study pursues that argument through a rigorous survey of pre-modern Japanese architecture, opening with reprinted international writings on the subject before moving into original research on specific medieval temples. It concludes with a series of essays, including a roundtable with architectural historian Wataru Mitsui. Crucially, the book refuses to isolate architecture from its cultural context: vernacular, religious, and secular buildings are examined alongside painting, sculpture, photography, and new-media art, revealing the shared social and aesthetic frameworks that shaped them all.
Key Features
- 288 pages of architectural scholarship, temple research, critical essays, and a roundtable discussion
- Editors: K. Fukushima, H. Tominaga, R. Sawaki, and R. Yamamoto
- Includes a roundtable discussion with architectural historian Wataru Mitsui
- Published by Gaden Books
What You'll Discover
- How the apparent structural harmony of medieval Japanese buildings may function as constructed illusion rather than honest expression of form
- The relationship between pre-modern wooden architecture and contemporaneous works of painting and sculpture, examined through shared social and aesthetic concerns
- International critical perspectives on Japanese architecture, drawn from reprinted source texts that frame the original research
- How vernacular, religious, secular, and corporate architecture intersect with new-media art in a single interpretive framework
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 288
- Dimensions: 297 x 188 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9784991145629
- Publisher: Gaden Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architectural historians, scholars of Japanese spatial culture, designers interested in the relationship between structure and appearance, and researchers working across architecture, art history, and material culture.