Collection by Luke Hopping
Japanese-Inspired Homes Around the World
Cut off from much of the world until the 19th-century, Japan's architecture has been readily accepted and adapted in countries from New Zealand to the Netherlands since then.
The sunken bathtub in George Nakashima’s Sanso Villa mimics the shape of a swimming pool on the grounds. His daughter, Mira Nakashima, took over the studio after his death and now lives and works on the property. “A Japanese garden often has a central pond derived from the character for ‘heart’ or ‘spirit,’ and this may be an abstraction of that character,” she says of the tub’s sculptural form.
The striking black facade of Pieter Weijnen's home in IJburg, Amsterdam, is the result of the Japanese practice of charring wood. Weijnen, an architect at the Amsterdam firm Faro, first discovered charred wood through the work of Terunobu Fujimori and later traveled to the Japanese island of Naoshima to observe the traditional technique. Photo by Hans Peter Follmi.