Ceremony Provides Insight into Japanese Sensibilities of Design

This paper considers how mitate, the act of drawing an analogy between two seemingly unrelated things, was used to give students a ‘way in ’ to designing an addition to the main hall of a Shinto Shrine in Japan. The challenge of the project was to create places that celebrate local identity; yet without the opportunity to visit Japan, how then to avoid external preconceptions or misinterpretations, and to develop an awareness of another culture’s sensibilities towards the built environment, particularly concepts alien to a Western perspective? Using mitate, students engaged with Japanese beliefs and values through an exploration of the Japanese ritual of the tea ceremony. This ceremony introduced certain key concepts, including: the wabi-sabi aesthetic; the emphasis upon feeling in Japanese philosophical tradition; the concept of one-time one-moment; the construct of ‘in-between ’ in the Japanese conception of space; and the notion of purposefulness. This paper will review how this grounding informed the students ’ work and prompted them to critically re-examine their own a priori thinking and established practices