Cover image for Zen gardens : the complete works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer
Title:
Zen gardens : the complete works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed.
Publication Information:
Toyko ; Rutland, Vt. : Tuttle Pub., 2012
Physical Description:
223 p. : ill. col. ; 26 cm.
ISBN:
9784805311943
Personal Subject:

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32070000000264 SB458 L63 2012 Open Access Book Book
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Summary

Summary

Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has worked in ultramodern urban hotels and some of Japan's most famous classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer of landscape architecture is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a Zen garden, "a special spiritual place where the mind dwells."

This beautiful book, illustrated with more than 400 drawings and color photographs, is the first complete retrospective of Masuno's work to be published in English. It presents 37 major gardens around the world in a wide variety of types and settings: traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, public spaces and private residences, and including temple, office, hotel and campus venues. Masuno achieved fame for his work in Japan, but he is becoming increasingly known internationally, and in 2011 completed his first commission in the United States which is shown here.

Zen Gardens , divided into three chapters, covers: "Traditional Zen Gardens," "Contemporary Zen Gardens" and "Zen Gardens outside Japan." Each Zen garden design is described and analyzed by author Mira Locher, herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.

Celebrating the accomplishments of an influential, world-class designer, Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese garden design and appreciation: how to perceive a Japanese garden, how to understand one, even how to make one yourself. Like one of Masuno's gardens, the book can be a place for contemplation and mindful repose.


Author Notes

Mira Locher is an architect and professor who works in the U.S. and Japan. She studied at Smith College before receiving her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After working for Team Zoo Atelier Mobile in Japan for seven years, she set up an architectural practice in the U.S. with Takayuki Murakami. Mira Locher is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba (Canada). She is the author of Super Potato Design, Zen Gardens and Zen Garden Design .


Reviews 1

Publisher's Weekly Review

Shunmyo Masuno is a Buddhist priest and Japan's premier landscape designer. Locher's stunning presentation highlights 37 master gardens in Japan and abroad (including in the U.S.) that embody a transcendent marriage between the primal elements of nature and metaphysics. After tracing the history and evolution of Zen gardens through the centuries, the author examines and presents the contemporary work of Masuno. His gardens focus on the atmosphere of a garden. "In Japanese culture," writes Masuno, "rather than emphasizing the form of something itself, more importance is placed on the feeling of the invisible things that come with it: restrained elegance, delicate beauty, elegant simplicity and rusticity." Designing and tending a "paradise garden" arose from the Pure Land school of Buddhist thought and remains a primary responsibility of the Buddhist priest. In these gardens, ornaments are eschewed in deference to the simplicity of using only a few basic elements: rocks, pea stone, carefully tended plant life. With 320 color photos and designs, Locher captures the mystery and mastery of Masuno's work. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.