Architecture
Japan: Wooden Temples, Shrines, Castles
In Japan, some wooden temples of Nara are over 1,000 years old. Although some parts have been replaced, much of the original structure is said to be intact. Ise Shrine, also a wooden structure, is completely rebuilt in exactly the same style every 20 years. The primary reason behind this may relate to the ancient Japanese imitation of rebirth in nature and the impermanence of all things. This practice also helps to preserve traditional carpentry skills and techniques (building without nails). Wooden castles were destroyed or dismantled during the shift from feudalism in the Meiji Restoration. Intact examples are Himeji Castle (17th century) and Hikone Castle (15th century). Reconstructed examples are Osaka Castle and Himeji Castle.
Other cultures might build from stone, but the jungles and forests might overgrow the buildings, as in Angkor Wat.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Asia
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)