Category: Landscape Architecture

Cat’s Eye View of Japanese Architecture vol.3

If you want to find cats in Japan, you would have the best luck by going to shrines and temples. Why? There are two reasons: One is that the shrine and temple grounds are “public” places where nobody stops you to come in, even if you are a cat. In fact,

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New Haven Rotary Club Invited PED for a Healing Garden Talk

It would be nice to become refleshed by just attending a lunch time talk, would it not? And that was what we saw at the New Haven Rotary Club when Takaya gave another talk on “Healing Gardens and Japanese Gardens: Their Curious Relationship” .  Although his talk is not the therapeutic

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Healing Garden Talk at Cheshire Rotary Club, CT

Takaya Kurimoto of PED presented a talk on “Healing Gardens and Japanese Gardens” at the Rotary Club meeting in Cheshire, Connecticut. There is a curious relationship between these two different gardens! If you want to know more about it, please contact us at info@pedarch.com . Thank you very much for members of

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Mizuya- Where Water Purifies You and Your Tea Bowls

Some of you may know the Japanese term Mizuya (水屋), expressed with Chinese characters for “water” and “house”, as a type of Japanese kitchen chests. It is getting popular in New York and other metropolises. Yet did you realize that Mizuya  initially had a quite different meaning? Mizuya originally referred to, and still could refer

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Sansui- Mountains and Water in Japanese Gardens

At our talk in April in New York, among a variety of questions we were happy to receive, there was an interesting one that could be called a linguestic question: “What does sansui (山水) mean? Does it mean nature or a garden?” In Japanese, san (山) means a mountain and

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Category: Blog

Mindfulness through Ma
Mindfulness through Ma

More than a gate Another Japanese spatial concept that contributes to designing a mindful space is the boundary in motion. One of the Japanese words for this is Ma, which generally means “gap.” The Chinese character for Ma (間) represents a gate made out of two doors with the moonlight coming through.

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Utsuroi in Japanese Architecture and Landscape
Utsuroi in Japanese Architecture and Landscape

Utsuroi: changing space Utsuroi, another Japanese spatial concept that causes the self/space boundary to blur, is present throughout Japanese architecture and gardens. Utsuroi means gradual and inevitable change from one state to another. It can also refer to reflection or projection of one thing onto another. Both meanings suggest that nothing

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Takaya Kurimoto gave spoke on water in Japanese gardens at Stony Brook University
Water in Japanese Gardens: Lecture at Stony Brook University

Takaya Kurimoto gave a talk “Water in Japanese Gardens” at the Japan Center at Stony Brook University on December 2nd, 2019. Many enthusiastic students and faculty members attended this event! Water has been one of the most important elements of Japanese gardens. Takaya introduced its three different characteristics and background

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