Yes, my latest journey was to this mystical land of inspiration, where traditional elements are blended with modern style, harmonizing form and function with a focus on simplicity and the use of natural materials.
This sixteen-day adventure to Japan included my five grandchildren and two of their significant others. We visited Tokyo, Takayama, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Naoshima, each area with its own compelling gifts for us.
I am a designer of luxury homes, remodels and additions, and my eyes are always looking for inspiration. Travel invigorates my creativity. Typically, no specific detail that I see in my wanderings is replicated in my work here in Chapel Hill, but what I see is often synthesized into new forms.
This photo of our group was taken in front of a Shinto shrine at Shirakawa-go.
Our journey included several hours at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Shirakawa-go, a 250-year-old mountain village that has been preserved for tourist visits. Shirakawa-go is known for its gassho-zukuri (“like praying hands”) style houses, which you can see emulated in the steeply-pitched gable roof structure.
Additionally, each house is built without nails, instead employing a precise network of interlocking beams and using only natural materials from the surrounding forest.
There is nothing in particular about Shirakawa-go that will appear in my work, but this a great example of the sustenance of “home” and its merging of the practical and the soul needs. To experience in person the love and care that went into the construction of each of the homes reminded me of the same love and care that Zinn Design Build provides for each of our clients.
We spent one day on a private tour of Naoshima, an island dedicated to and known for its contemporary art installations and museums, where we found ourselves immersed in a profound experience of creativity.
Previously neglected and suffering from a landscape damaged by pollution from the copper ore refinery built there in the 1910s, the island began its unique transformation in the 1980s, when billionaire Soichiro Fukutake set about to pursue his late father’s dream to create an international campsite for children.
Visiting the island to oversee the project, Fukutake observed the damage “inflicted from the excesses of modernization and urbanization… became enraged and decided to use art to fight against what society had done”.
World-famous Japanese architect Tadao Ando was enlisted to begin the revitalization effort, first designing the Benesse House Museum and hotel. The works of many notable artists, including Yoyoi Kusama, Claude Monet and James Turrell, are now on permanent display across the island.
Ando himself left his mark with ten very simple yet monumental structures, constructed of smooth reinforced concrete, often using sharp angles and large windows which play on the control of natural light.
