Find contemplation and self-awareness. Tthe deliberate use of light and shadow plays a role. Roofs shield the sun and create a soft and dim natural light indoors. A common misunderstanding is the association of "Japanese" with straightness, purism and simplicity. It is true that Japanese design is always "unpretantional" and simply - in the Western sense. The term "straightness" must be replaced b
y clarity. Japanese interior design is indeed always clear-cut and functional, but just randomnesses and irregularities are evident characteristics of Japanese aesthetics. An important aspect of Japanese aesthetics is the asymmetry. Symmetry has a static character, while skillful asymmetry gives dynamic and flexibility. Because the Japanese rooms are not properly separated to the outside, there is a perfect unity between the interior and the garden space. The outdoor is directly experienced by sitting in the room. From this point of view bushes are formed, sand is scattered in wave figures - reminiscent of water - large stones are used, such as islands. The Japanese garden is a painting and he is designed in his almost over-emphasized organic shapes just as confident as the Japanese house in its strict geometry. The geometric and the organic - each in its full purity - produce together the atmosphere of cosmic harmony. The Japanese interior needs the garden, like the garden needs the interior. Small irregular stone paths protect the mossy ground, leading to places of meditation. Straight bamboo fences and simple gates define the borders of the garden. World away and separated you can focus on your thoughts. Zen Buddhism has strongly influenced the Japanese interior design. The central idea of Buddhism is "emptiness" and "selflessness ". In this sense things have no self, everything flows. Things are only compositions of various elements, which dissolve after some time, to form other compositions. Creative consequences of this view are the empty center and the suggested movement by asymmetry of the design elements. This applies to rooms, gardens and works of art. In a further contrast, the aesthetic sophistication of things is not judged on their material value, but according to their naturalness - their genuine evidence of the material. Of high-quality are for example rugged cast iron, scarred wood grains or rough straw and bamboo. Highly appreciated are visible signs of use, which create their own unique patterns. The beautiful aged wood is not beautiful because it is just beautiful, but because it has absorbed life experience. Indoor Solutions based on these old-Japanese interior design principles follow the Old-Japanese ideal of beauty:
"BEAUTY BORN BY USE"
The exemplary manner of the old Japanese role model
Compared with all European craft the old-Japanese craft has an almost improbable, mysterious degree of technical and aesthetic refinement and completion. The old-Japanese craft is the craft of a feudal society and the related feudal economy. Only in a feudal society the aesthetic enjoyment of crafted things are operated with such exclusivity. The crafts of commoners in Europe has paid for its great achievement – the freedom and independence of the economizing individual - with the competitive pressure due to economic thinking and therefore even with a loss of aesthetic. And nowhere else in the entire history of material culture, the aesthetic enjoyment of handicraft works has reached such a high a degree of intellectual sublimation as in the Japanese tea ceremony and the accompanying vessels, rooms, houses and gardens. Across the technical and social chasm, that separates our modern living and construction problems from Old-Japan, the exemplary aesthetic, spiritual and human manner of the old Japanese model for our presence remains
The malady of today's living "culture" in fact is not primarily a technical or an aesthetic manner, but a social one:
In the desire to be-more of the upper class and the desire to seem-more of the middle class. The old-Japanese living culture is gratifying far away off these manners. Because it is the living culture of – without any discussion - economically equal, high-ranking persons. Only under this condition the greatest simplicity may be a feature of the greatest exclusivity and the highest spiritual nobility. For us it takes a conscious mental decision of the single individual, to jump out of the vicious circle of wanting to be-more and to seem-more in his personal lifestyle, in which our consumer goods industry involves us almost hopelessly. But for those who did this mental jump once,
old-Japanese interiors represent the highest degree of
aesthetic, spiritual and human exclusivity.
