Architecture and the Nature of Materiality

Abstract

This study investigates the potential expression of the traditional Japanese aesthetics of wabi and sabi in contemporary architecture. It argues that wabi and sabi have tended to be superficially imitated outside Japan because of a lack of awareness of the underlying realizations they were originally intended to express about the nature of being. It is suggested that without an understanding of those ideas, most of which derived from Zen Buddhism, wabi and sabi not only lose much of their meaning but also their capacity for reinterpretation. The thesis examines Zen observations about the characteristics of material being in nature, traditional Japanese art and architecture, and in particular the tea ritual. It then explores how the particular Zen ideas underlying wabi and sabi might be expressed in the elements of contemporary buildings.