Japanese Architecture

Architecture in Japan,

the Kansai region.

By Daniela

Kansai

Kansai is located in the southern-central region of Japans main Island Honshu. In

the north, Kansai borders the Sea of Japan, in the south the Kii Peninsula and the

Pacific ocean.

Japan

Kansai Region

More Information about KansaiKansai is called as the treasure house

of Japan. Four Japanese National Parks are located

in the Kansai region and many

old buildings representing

Japanese architecture.

Architecture in the Prehistoric

It is known that there was no examples of

prehistoric architecture in Japan. Not many old texts contain information about architecture or buildings.

Most houses then had floors made out of dirt or wood and roofs covered

with thatch.

Asuka Architecture

The oldest buildings stand in Japan, are found southwest of Nara. They are

made out of wood. During the Asuka period, in the 7th century, many temples were built. One of them

consists of 41 independent buildings; the most important ones are covered by a roofed cloister. The Kondo (or the hall) is a two-story building of post and beam

construction covered with a hipped-

gabbled roof made out of ceramic tiles.

Heian ArchitectureJapanese Buddhist architecture

adopted a method of building temples and houses in the mountains. Because of the

irregular topography of these places, Japanese people had to rethink the way of constructing the buildings. The ceramic tile

roofs were replaced with cypress-bark roofs, earthen floors were

replaced with wood planks.

Halls- Phoenix Hall

Japanese people concentrated on building halls. A good example of a hall is the Phoenix Hall built in

1053, southwest to Kyoto. The hall was made of two 'L' shaped wing corridors and a tail corridor located next to a pond. Inside the building, on a platform a

picture of Amid is installed. In that time, a new fashion for making things out of many pieces of

carved wood appeared. The walls were covered with many sculptures and carvings.

Phoenix Hall

Kamakura Architecture

During the Kamakura period, architecture of Japan had developed and made technological advances mostly taken from Korea and China. Because of the weather in Japan, earthquakes

and other obstacles Japans architecture became unique. (Because buildings were

made mostly from wood, they often got on fire.) After the political power was taken over, the main architecture style was a mixture of

turrets and shinden-zukuri style.

Pagoda at Kamakura (left)Roof of Hasedera Temple (below)

Modern Japan

After World War II, Japan needed to be rebuild.

Soon, new cities were built but were different then the usual buildings in Japan. New steel

and concrete buildings pushed out the old, traditional

buildings.

Japan Today

The architecture of Japanese buildings has changed many times

by the aspects of culture and society; it was improved but

stayed always beautiful. Today Japan has many skyscrapers and

modern buildings.

All the information used in the presentation was found on:

http://www.kippo.or.jp/culture_e/build/history.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Japan