As if pouring a new cup of inspiration every day, New Mexico’s azure skies can move a woodworker to hone an organic design-build process that’s in unison with the land and materials that surround him.
“The landscape here is so large, so readily available, and so beautiful. It’s like the desert brings home the truth of nature’s beauty, naturally,” says Jon Driscoll, head of the woodworking shop at Ten Thousand Waves Japanese Spa in Santa Fe.
Driscoll, a former priest in the Tendai tradition of Japanese Buddhism, manifests his daily dao — or path — as he works on the spa’s ongoing projects — from furniture-making to building structures — as conscious acts of meditation in action.
For Driscoll, the essence of what is known as organic building is integrating inner discoveries with outer creativity.
“It’s not building with money-making motives,” he says. “Instead, you prevail upon an inner harmony that’s in tune with nature’s beauty to guide your design objectives.”
While training with a Japanese woodworker in California, Driscoll was taught to honor the sacredness of all sentient beings and building materials while designing livable spaces imbued with understated beauty.
“I learned from my Japanese sensei that showing respect for building materials, tools and people is a reflection of the person’s caring, and, by extension, in taking care of the larger community, too,” Driscoll says.
This focused attention to details, precision and simple, clean lines in the Japanese design ethos is reflected in the final product, where an ineffable harmony between materials and fine craftsmanship brings out the natural beauty of the wood and other natural building materials.
Driscoll quotes Japan’s most famous haiku poet to help define organic design: “Return to nature/Which is your nature,” Matsuo Basho wrote in the 17th century.
“It’s also a wholesome mix of traditional with contemporary styles reflecting nature’s beauty,” Driscoll adds.
As an example, he cites Ten Thousand Waves’ new “relax room” built with subtly aromatic cedar from the Pacific Northwest and tatami — straw mats made from rice husks — laid out on a cherry hardwood floor. But, while the room is essentially Japanese in style, Driscoll says, one concrete wall lined with long gooseneck lamps brings a modern feel to the space.
‘Return to nature’
What we now call “organic design” — as championed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and others — had its origins in traditional Japanese design.
Both are site-specific and compatible with a location’s climate, terrain and resources. Both fill space sparingly and wisely.
Japanese design makes use of natural materials such as wood, clay, concrete, straw, rocks and sand. Read adobe for clay, wood for latillas and corbels, and coyote fences for straw and you’ll see the intrinsic relationship between Japanese and Southwestern design. Japanese straw fences are secured on bamboo poles with twine, the same way many coyote fences are put together in New Mexico.
Capitalizing on local plants is another key element of organic design. Similar to xeriscaping on the high desert, Japanese karesansui (dry mountain water) garden design conserves resources. It mimics nature by using her materials to build dry streams with stones and pebbles, setting off dry lawns of sand with artful rock placements.
The Japanese design concept of wabi sabi (quiet serenity and rusticity) fosters an intuitively asymmetrical placement of alcoves and furnishings in harmony with spatial use and flow. The idea is to reflect the spontaneous growth of nature’s floral and foliage designs without contrived attempts at symmetry.
Green tactics such as passive cooling with courtyards and operable windows that can naturally ventilate rooms are another traditional Japanese element that has also been long-used in the Southwest. Given the convection mechanism, hot air in the central courtyard rises. Cooler air is pulled in through open windows to cool inside spaces, while allowing rooms to ventilate and refresh the senses naturally.
The architectural vernacular of the wrap-around porch or bungalow veranda also is borrowed from the Japanese, with the engawa (or covered portale) enhancing patio-style entertaining, while maximizing spatial use. In the wintertime, the engawa, like our sun rooms, would be closed off to afford an extra layer of insulation.
Le Corbusier’s influence
Frank Lloyd Wright’s call for “organic architecture” came after his first visit to Japan in 1905. Enamored with the Japanese predilection for simple living, he wrote in An Autobiography that the Japanese home was “a supreme study in elimination — not only of dirt but the elimination of the insignificant.”
Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born architect who later became a citizen of France, developed skyscrapers in the 1920s as “machines for living.” They were his answer to the increasingly crowded city of Paris’ low-cost housing needs and influenced low-income housing projects from New York to Chicago.
The modernist architect, writer, city planner and furniture designer also drew much of his inspiration from Japan.
Le Corbusier created rooftop gardens to replace the patches of green his “living machines” took away from the streetscape. Today, this design sensibility straddles the globe with multiple living, gardening, entertaining and insulation possibilities on urban and rural rooftops.
‘Karesansui’
Integrating nature into the living space of a home is an intrinsic part of the overall Japanese design aesthetic and experience. The Japanese call this shakkei. In addition to providing air flow, open windows and sliding doors offer neat garden views, present an illusion of spaciousness, and allow nature’s understated beauty to shine in daylight or twilight hours.
Mary Burnett de Gomez has been creating Japanese gardens for more than two decades. She opened Hanayagi: The Japanese Garden Shop, Inc., in Albuquerque in 1986. Increasing demands for Japanese tools and lifestyle items prompted a move to her present location — a Hawaiian-style garden setting at the southwest corner of Candelaria Road and Louisiana Boulevard — in 1996.
“Our New Mexico climate and conditions are perfect for the Japanese dry landscaping, karesansui, which literally means “dry mountain water,” Burnett de Gomez says. “This style of landscape design is drawn from the rocky Japanese islands shaped by beautiful mountains, rivers and the surrounding seas. New Mexico, with its dramatic mountains and expanses of high desert, reminds me often of Japan,” she adds wistfully.
“Our beautiful piñon pines, magnificent stones — each powerful in their own way — and softly colored gravel are perfect for the austere karesansui garden,” Burnett de Gomez says, “while using up minimal water resources.”
She believes strongly that gardens need to be suited to the local environment.
“Plants should be comfortable and compatible with soil conditions,” she says — and that’s why karesansui is a very appropriate xeriscape for the high-desert environment.
“Native plant materials can be combined with very drought-resistant and traditional Asian plants such as Nandina domestica (heavenly bamboo) and a wide variety of conifers for an authentic Japanese design,” Burnett de Gomez notes.
When designing Japanese gardens, she also uses many principles from the Japanese school of floral design, ikebana.
“Ikebana embodies the essence of Japanese aesthetics by emphasizing a deep respect for nature, the beauty of simple line and form, and bringing nature into our homes and daily lives,” says Burnett de Gomez, the only certified master teacher of the Ichiyo School of Ikebana in New Mexico.
‘Soul-healing calm’
What we call “Japanese style” is an intrinsically organic approach to design that refreshes us at the end of the day, creating quiet sanctuaries in which we can live simply and in harmony with nature’s beauty.
A number of the elements that make up this distinctive style also are traditional to the American Southwest — and beginning to find their way to other parts of the country.
“Americans crave soul-healing calm,” says Michael Zimber, owner of Santa Fe’s Stone Forest, Inc., renowned for elegant fountains and home furnishings handcrafted from stone and marble. “Instinctively and experientially,” he says, “we know that the natural world holds the cure.”
LOCAL RESOURCESWhere to find Japanese furnishings and design elements:
Archetype Store at Sunrise
Springs Resort & Spa
242 Los Pinos Road, Santa Fe;
Tel: 428-3615
www.sunrisesprings.comHanayagi Garden Shop
2935-C Louisiana Blvd.,
Albuquerque; 505-291-1177
www.hanayagi.netPaperGami
Albuquerque: 114 Tulane
Drive SE; 800-569-2280
Santa Fe: 213 W. San
Francisco St.; 982-3080
www.papergami.comSachi Organics
Albuquerque: 3708 Central
Ave. SE; 232-9667
Santa Fe: 523 W. Cordova
Road; 982-3938
www.sachiorganics.comShibui
215 E. Palace Ave., Santa Fe;
986-1117
www.shibui.comStone Forest, Inc.
213 S. St. Francis Drive, Santa
Fe; 888-682-2987
www.stoneforest.comTen Thousand Waves Spa
Gift Store
Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe;
992-5025
www.tenthousandwaves.comWabi-Sabi Gifts
216A Paseo del Pueblo Norte,
Taos; 505-758-7801
www.wabisabi.biz
BOOK SIGNINGSSunamita Lim is the author of two Asian style books — Japanese Style: Designing with Nature’s Beauty (2007) and Chinese Style: Living in Beauty and Prosperity (2006) — as well as Spa Living: Ideas, Tips & Recipes for Revitalizing Body-Mind-Spirit (2007). All three are published by Gibbs Smith.
She will sign copies of Japanese Style ($29.95) at Collected Works Bookstore, 208-B W. San Francisco St., from 5 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 12. For more information, call 988-4226 or visit
www.collectedworksbookstore.com.
Lim also will discuss and sign Japanese Style at Borders Uptown, 2240 Q Street NE, Suite 10K in Albuquerque from 2 to 5 p.m. on Oct. 13.
Call 505-884-7711 for more information.
![[Get Copyright
Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif){kind=small}
Click here for copyright permissions! 