Title: Katsura Rikyu
Author: Kimon Berlin
Date: November 25, 2008
Description: The image above is known as Katsura Villa, where the palace of a prince is surrounded by a stunning landscape that consists of trees, stones and large bodies of water. There is no doubt that the designer of the palace was heavily influenced by the environmental factors when designing the structure. For example, the materials of the palace are mostly organic materials from the surrounding area to camouflage the palace with the natural environment. When looking at where the palace is specifically located the designer did not want to tamper with the natural surrounding area in any way that would take away from the purpose of the prince to feel at peace. However, there are some man-made contributions to the landscape such as the stone bridge and the arrangement of the rocks. These specific man-made arrangements of objects may have been intentionally put into place to create a good flow of circulation leading towards the direction of the palace. The designer of this piece of architecture beautifully integrated and used the landscape to their advantage when creating a harmonious structure.
Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katsura_Rikyu_(3264662094).jpg
Attribution: KimonBerlin, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
