What do you see when you look out your window? Is there a mountain range in the distance or a glimpse of the ocean? Perhaps there’s a city skyline or a particularly impressive tree. The ancient East Asian concept of shakkei, which translates to “borrowed landscape” or “borrowed scenery,” can help facilitate a greater connection between your home and the surrounding views.

Heian-jingū and Murin-an gardens. “Here, Ogawa incorporates the distant view of Mount Higashiyama,” says garden designer Sophie Walker, author of The Japanese Garden (Phaidon, 2017). “With the carefully composed natural scenes framed by windows and sloping roofs, you would never know that this private property is surrounded by the modern city of Kyoto.” " layout="" credit="Sophie Walker" photoUserId=""/>

“Shakkei is the ancient technique of incorporating a distant landscape into a garden setting, so as to appear seamlessly connected to the design,” says Sophie Walker, author of The Japanese Garden (Phaidon, 2017). While the technique was practiced in Japanese gardens as early as the Heian period (794–1185 AD), the Chinese coined the Mandarin term for the concept in the 17th century. Shakkei played a key role in Japanese garden design during the Edo period (1603–1868), and the design principle became popular among modernist architects in the 1960s.

While shakkei refers to the traditional technique of incorporating an outside view into a garden design, the concept also offers inspiration for connecting built forms with nature in a profound manner. But applying shakkei successfully to your home or garden involves more than simply framing a view: It requires a careful analysis of the landscape and surrounding elements to create a composition with depth, scale, and texture that integrates the “borrowed scenery” in a poetic way.

Genkō-an, a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, features two distinctly shaped windows that symbolize enlightenment (the circular window) and delusion (a neighboring square window). “The ‘borrowed landscape’ that is offered by these windows is carefully orchestrated—just as a painter would compose a painting,” says Walker." layout="wide" credit="Photo by Akira Nakata, courtesy Phaidon" photoUserId=""/>

Japan, has been ranked as the country’s most beautiful garden for 18 consecutive years by the Journal of Japanese Gardening. The garden, which was designed according to shakkei principles, features rugged stones that evoke the craggy mountains in the distance." layout="" credit="Photo by Malcolm Raggett, courtesy Phaidon" photoUserId=""/>

“In contrast to typically symmetrical and grandiose Western gardens, traditional East Asian gardens celebrate the natural formation of landscapes,” says architect Clinton Cole, cofounder of the Sydney-based CplusC Architectural Workshop. “In architecture, this concept is emphasized by framing specific elements of the ‘beyond scenery’ to connect the exterior landscapes with the interior.”

The walls that previously separated the kitchen, living, and dining areas were reimagined as vertical thresholds, and parts of the rear extension were pulled outward to form the open-air dining and lounge area. A circular window on the ground level overlooks the backyard, framing the transition between the interior and exterior." layout="" credit="Photo by Murray Fredericks" photoUserId=""/>

CplusC Architectural Workshop’s recent project, Totoro House, integrates shakkei as a core design concept. The Sydney home features a number of openings—circular and clerestory windows, as well as large sliding glass doors—that frame different elements of the interior and exterior. These openings connect the home’s various gathering spaces and create a natural transition between the family residence and its surrounding site.

“The window allows the clients to be private, yet also connected to the rear courtyard,” says architect Clinton Cole.
" layout="wide" credit="Photo by Murray Fredericks" photoUserId=""/>he UNESCO-listed Master of the Nets garden is home to the Moon Gate, which also exhibits a circular motif. “The symbolic borrowing of the moon as a tool for shakkei can be found in both China and Japan,” says Walker. “At this 12th-century garden, the Moon Gate offers a view of some carefully clipped bonsai trees, which reference the wild landscape of China."" layout="wide" credit="Sophie Walker" photoUserId=""/>

American architect Allison Ewing, cofounder of Hays + Ewing Design Studio, came across the concept of shakkei during a two-year fellowship researching Japanese teahouses in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. Since then, Ewing has evoked shakkei principles in various projects, such as the Lantern at Linkhorn Bay residence in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The geometric family home employs cantilevered rooflines and terraces, as well as floor-to-ceiling windows that call attention to the beauty of the site.

shakkei," Ewing says. " layout="wide" credit="Courtesy Hays+Ewing Design Studio" photoUserId=""/>

“Architects talk a lot about blurring the boundaries between inside and outside as a way of connecting humans to nature and daylight,” says Ewing. “Using the shakkei principles of garden planning in building design goes one step further. In my work, I use associative elements in the foreground so that the landscape’s beauty is more fully appreciated.”

Australian architect Lucy Clemenger also draws inspiration from the East Asian garden design concept—most notably in her Melbourne home, where she used the technique to expand her own sense of interior space in an urban context. “Shakkei allows the designer to embed the natural landscape into the built environment,” Clemenger says. “By blurring the edges of a site, the views that lie beyond the property’s boundaries can be drawn into the interior.”

The challenge, of course, with “borrowing” a distant landscape is the potential for an unexpected change in the scenery—which is an increasingly likely occurrence in our modern world. “With the growing global population, we are putting more and more pressure on the intact landscapes that would have once been incorporated as ‘borrowed scenery,’” says Walker. “Metaphorically speaking, the distant view is one we struggle to hold onto. I suspect shakkei has a very real importance with regard to our existence in relation to others.”

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