Zen Gardens
The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's Leading Garden Designer
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""Literacy is not the only skill needed to write a decent book, just as the ability to stick plants in the ground is not the only skill needed to make a decent garden. Zen Gardens gives a glimpse of the knowledge and dedication required to create a Japanese garden. Enthusiastic amateur garden designers should be forced to read it—particularly the description of this Zen Buddhist priest's work at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in Ottawa.""—Financial Times
""Zen Gardens endorses a spiritual approach to the process of garden design, whereby the design and its inherent aesthetic qualities are allowed to grow from the place, rather than being imposed on it. Illustrated with more than 400 drawings and colour photographs, this book is a wonderful source of inspiration for creating beautiful, contemplative landscapes.""—Garden Design Journal
""Even just a quick riffle through the pages of Zen Gardens: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno can cause a healthy lowering of one's blood pressure. Seeing such tranquil spaces in our generally chaotic world offers an escape to an oasis of serenity, or what Shunmyo Masuno himself calls an ""unmoving truth."" ... Author Mira Locher, an architect and professor based in the United States and Japan, is an excellent guide to this tour of Masuno's work, explaining key elements of Zen and Japanese design and the complexity of such calm splendor. ... Zen Gardens: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno is surely best approached just as one would enter a Masuno garden—with a sense of quiet, curious wonder at how man and nature can sometimes meet as one.""—ForeWord Reviews"|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 in 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 is illustrated with photographs and architectural plans or sketches. The designs are described and analyzed by author Mira Locher, herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.
Celebrating the accomplishments of a major, world-class designer, Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese...
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Creators
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Release date
October 10, 2012 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781462910496
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781462910496
- File size: 68538 KB
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Languages
- English
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