WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Of Homes and Windows in the 20th Century: In Conversation with Ken Tadashi Oshima, the Curator of Living Modernity: Experiments in Housing, 1920s–1970s

In the twentieth century as waves of modernization swept across the globe the home became a site of architectural experimentation—an arena i…

French window

A double-opening window with hinged sashes that swing outward typically installed in walls leading to a balcony garden or patio. Often featu…

Barred window

A window fitted with exterior bars or grilles primarily intended for security and privacy. In traditional Japanese architecture these grille…

Mashrabiya

A wooden lattice window commonly found in traditional homes in the Islamic world. It is designed to block out direct sunlight and external v…

Architecture in Motion

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice Yoh who began his career in interior and product design developed his interest in natural phenomena th…

Shoei Yoh’s “Light Architecture”

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice. These observations elucidate the motive behind Yoh’s technologically innovative use of structural sil…

Shoei Yoh: Architecture of Light, the Real, and Monism

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice (1981) and the Sundial House (1984) where one can compare light of various intensities entering from d…

“Shoei Yoh: A Journey of Light” Symposium Report

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice (1981) where he visually erased the structural frame by constructing it in glass. Iwamoto concluded th…

From Interiors to Non-Architecture

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice together with the key concepts of “light” and “non-architecture”. Shoei Yoh b…

The Ingot Coffee Shop: Building as a Mass of Glass

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice (1980) and Silver Building (1981). He even developed a method of using the silicone sealant to make we…

A Culmination of Sutemi Horiguchi’s Aperture Designs: The Tokoname City Municipal Ceramics Research Institute (Tokoname Tounomori Research Institute)

The exhibition Explorations of Horiguchi Sutemi: Modernism Rikyu Garde…

The Windows of Tomoya Masuda’s Naruto Cultural Center: A Faintly Bright Louvered Space

The Naruto Cultural Center is a posthumous work by architect Tomoya Masuda. It is one of several buildings that the former Kyoto University …

Issue 12: A Small Church for the Indigenous (Taitung)

It’s said that Christians now constitute around 7% of Taiwan’s population a rather high proportion compared to Japan’s sta…

“Light is Light and Light”

The Archaeology of the Digital exhibition held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in 2013 served as a catalyst for reevaluating t…

Shoei Yoh: A Journey of Light—Introduction

…inless Steel House with Light Lattice (1981) from his Light Architecture series of the 1980s he realized poetic spaces that gave form to lig…

Terunobu Fujimori│007: The Shōji of the Rinshunkaku

In this series architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and places will be…

Migishi Atelier

Virtual Tour

This early work of Japanese wooden modernist architecture was built for the painter couple Kotaro and Setsuko Migishi. Despite undergoing mu…

Katsura Catholic Church

Completed in 1965 the Katsura Catholic Church in Kyoto is known as the only George Nakashima-designed building in Japan. The structure of th…

Terunobu Fujimori│006: The Shitomi of the Kondo Hall at Ninnaji Temple

In this series architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori who has trave…

Issue 9: The Windy County Office—Yilan County Hall (Atelier Zo)

While this column has primarily introduced the windows of unnamed buildings in Taiwan there are a number of works of modern and contemporary…

Double Vision

Selecting “wallpaper” or organizing files on a “desktop” are now familiar acts that can either take place on our digital devices or in our l…

Issue 8: The Town of Floating Pigeon Lofts

Houses stand there dotting the farmland. Small huts sit above them in the sky. It’s a bit of a strange sight but one that you’ll…

Terunobu Fujimori│005: The Katōmado of the Shizutani School Auditorium: An Un-Japanese Japanese Window

In this series architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori who has trave…

The Experimental Design of the KATONO House in Sapporo

Known as an experimental work of modern architecture tailored for Hokkaido’s climate the KATONO House (Personal Residence) in Sapporo design…

Terunobu Fujimori | 004: The French Windows of the Glover House: Arrivals from India

In this series architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and places will be…

Terunobu Fujimori | 003: The Vertical Sliding Windows of the Public Speaking Hall (Mita Enzetsukan)

In this series architectural historian and architect Terunobu Fujimori who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and …

Terunobu Fujimori｜ 002: The Diverse Openings of the Yosuitei’s Thirteen-Window Tearoom

In this series architectural historian and architect Terunobu Fujimori who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and …

Shikidō/Frosted Glass Window for Study

This place is the birthplace of Shiki Masaoka where he lived until the age of 17 years reproduced in Matsuyama Ehime Prefecture. Shiki studi…

Terunobu Fujimori｜001: The Advent of Magical Light-Transmitting Surfaces, Glass Doors of the Hirano Residence

In this series architectural historian and architect Terunobu Fujimori who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and …

Issue 1: Windows Visited by Spirits: Pingdong

After his experience on a journey through villages and folk houses in …

Former Shimauta Post Office/Wooden Counter and the Window

This is a wooden two-story post office in the Historical Village of Hokkaido built in 1902. It was restored in 1960. The modern-day post off…

Rushing Along the Nile: Egypt and the Nile

After walking around Cairo for a few days I took a flight to Aswan Egypt’s southernmost city. From there I followed the Nile River nor…

Izumo Mingeishi Studio/Window of Drying Room

Windows of the drying room at a Japanese paper studio. To make Izumo folk-craft paper the pressed paper is affixed to kiln-heated iron plate…

A Combining City: Cairo

I got on a plane in Jordan and flew to Cairo Egypt. It was my first time on the African continent. Though most capitals are busy Cairo seeme…

Religion and Cities: Isfahan, Iran

I experienced no small amount of culture shock in Iran as it was the first Islamic country I visited. Many of the people I passed on the str…

Shifted Windows: Masuleh, Iran

There is a small village in the valleys of Iran known as Masuleh that has stood there for over a thousand years. Its tiered homes are built …

Ch.2 Symbolic Realism

…o the fore in the next image. Latticed Window 1835 We need to take a step back. In the month of August 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot produce…

Casa Barragan

The window looking onto the inner garden of Louis Barragan’s house is divided into a large fixed window and a lattice window. The bottom lef…

Takekobo/Window of the Bamboo Workshop

A bamboo workshop in Uchiko Ehime Prefecture established about 140 years ago. To be able to open its narrow front window as widely as possib…

Zhangcun: The Needs of the Underground Part 2

I’ve come to realize that meeting with elders is the best way to learn about their village. Walking through a loess land of beautiful green …

Windows: Openings and devices

Laurent Stalder a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) has researched various threshold devices in archit…

Part 2: Yoshiharu Tsukamoto “Window Behaviorology”

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Architect Atelier Bow-Wow) has conducted “Window Behaviorology” an extensive field work on windows around t…

Part 1: Yoshiharu Tsukamoto “Window Behaviorology”

“Human behaviors are the best design resources.” Architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Atelier Bow-Wow/Professor Tokyo Institute of Technology) has…

Part 3 Shokatei at Katsura Imperial Villa

Members of the Imperial Family were the first to enjoy the luxury of tea a valuable item at that time before the art of the tea ceremony was…

Mu’s Mansion Hotel

The windows of a hotel in Li Jiang. Three sets of double-casement windows are lined in a row the upper part of which are latticed. The swast…

Part 5: To China International Window City!

The aperture in Japanese architecture is the “ma” or “space between objects.” The aperture in western architecture is the “hole.” What is it…

Part 2: Jo-an

It seems reasonable to assume that chanoyu or the Japanese “Way of Tea” established by Sen no Rikyu was spread and led by sengok…

Architectural Ethnography, Part B

To commemorate the opening of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia (May 26th-November 25th 2018) the Window…