Three Types of Enclosures

Arab house American house Japanese house

The Japanese house is surrounded by a "soft" natural barrier

Privacy

Although the Japanese house plan may lead to some ambiguity, Japanese architecture nevertheless attempts to protect a certain space from the exterior environment. And vague though it may be, there is still some kind of division between the two zones, determined primarily by whether one is wearing shoes or not. The feeling that Japanese houses afford little or no privacy is due to the fact that, although the number of barriers is rich in variety, they remain thin and light. But this poses no problem to the Japanese, for there is a certain refinement about a soft, bare­ly perceptible light seeping through a shoji paper door, or the sound of rain just on the other side of a latticed window.

In fact, privacy is preserved not physically but through distance, and Japanese refer to the most private part of the house, or the most sacred part of a shrine, as the "deep, inner recess." Unlike Western brick and stone design schemes which call for an interior and exterior consciously divided by walls, a hierarchy of space, as discussed in the Introduction, has emerg­ed in Japan. The open space around the innermost, private bed chamber is divided into several rooms by the use of movable partitions. From this innermost room is a continuum of space through the rest of the house to the area below the eaves, to the garden, and even beyond the garden in some cases when distant scenery is included as part of the overall design.

Plan of Japanese house and garden (cross-section)

The Garden

In comparing photographs of Western gardens and Japanese gardens, one notices that in many Western plans the garden is viewed from outside and the building placed against that background. Japanese gardens, on the other hand, are intended to be viewed from an interior space against the background of a wall or fence. This is because Japanese gardens are designed in concert with the room interiors, giving full consideration to sight lines from the rooms, the corridor, or a special viewing platform.

Intermediate Space Components

As previously mentioned, the intermediate space can be seen as an important extension of the house, and as an extension of the garden. There are three ma­jor elements found in this intermediate zone: the formal entranceway, the veranda, and screening devices. The entranceway is where shoes are removed, symbolizing the transi­tion from the exterior to the interior. The veranda is a multi­purpose area where one can relax or entertain visitors informal­ly. Screening devices help to unite man and nature by providing ways of allowing the inhabitants of a house to see or hear nature with little difficulty, while still protecting them from the elements.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1004