ORDINARY BUILDING BIZEN

Just another ordinary building in Bizen, Japan.  After getting off the train and then starting to walk thru the town, this was the second building that I took photos of.   There are many buildings in Japan that, even within the strictures of small towns, are open on three sides.  This creates an incredible laboratory with which to photograph to draw to knowledge the daily intracacies of the ordinary Japanese building.

In this great example, there are some of the more typical massing elements: a basic gable form, which steps, and is flanked with smaller longitudinal shed appurtenances.  Also typical are the small longitudinal roofs over fenestrated openings in the walls:  I assume this is to both shed water as well as to control the sun intake.

The retail storefront distinguishes this piece.  Bizen, of course, is world famous for it’s pottery; specifically because of the type of clay that is harvested there.  And many Bizen buildings have a storefront element, principally to sell pottery.  In this example, the gesture to this retail function is the plane, made of wood vertical wood strips with a space between.  The rectangular geometry implies retail.  It is as if the plane has been slid upwards to permit access to the storefront.  Imagine that this plane would slide down when the store closed. And note how the unvisible (new Transparent Drawing term;  more on that later) gable form behind the plane is made visible by suggestion, which is either from shadow, or the way the water runoff has selectively darkened the wood strips of the plane.

Yet it is the incredible sophistication of the way that all of these elements:  gable, shed, longitudinal roof and plane are fastidiously integrated so as to make an organic whole.  After I drew my drawing above, I realized it was Ready To Build.

Previous pages that help to further define the Transparent Drawing concept of Ordinary Buildings include:
–Survey Drawing
–The Most Beautiful Building in the World
–Ordinary Building Morocco