Title of Work: Katsura Imperial Villa
Author Name: Tomoaki Ueda
Licensing Information: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
Medium: image/jpeg
Date of Creation: taken on July 10, 2006
Dimensions: 1,600 x 1,200 pixels
Image Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20161014051647/http://www.panoramio.com/photo/28086526
Description: The Katsura Imperial Villa is a serine cluster of buildings located in the suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. This villa was erected in the early 17th century, and was an oasis for Prince Toshihito and then his son Prince Toshitada, who both made additions to the original structure. Sitting on around 16 acres of land, the Villa’s structures take on it’s organic backgrounds and incorporate them into the architecture. The usage of natural materials, bamboo, wood, and stone, makes the look of the buildings nearly disappear into their surroundings of trees. This structure is beautiful in its simplicity of clean lines and ingenuity in materiality. The usage of screens, open barred windows, and platform this structure promotes indoor to outdoor living. The thoughtful aspects of incorporating nature into the acticature, such as in those rock steps leading to the door, makes it feel as if the structure was built around nature, opposed to the latter. This sentiment of honoring nature by building around it speaks to larger Japanese values of respecting nature in all aspects of life.
Other description sources: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Katsura-Imperial-Villa
