Walls that aren't walls.....something that is only half there.....it's a design notion sometimes neglected. Translucency is only one way of designing something to only half exist, but it's the way the Japanese have been acheiving it for centuries. They call it a shoji, be it a door, a window or a screen, and the thing that shoji have in common is a translucent covering over a fixed lattice. The lattice is made of wood or bamboo, the covering either of traditional hand-made Japanese washi paper, or today manufactured paper. The simplicity of the squared pattern and that paper-filtered light give the calm which so hallmarks Japanese interiors. The Chihuly glass flowers, pictured, have a different origin but somehow share this same spirit. Could paper be the forgotten design tool?
1 Traditional style Japanese house atYamamoto-tei, Shibamata Katsushika-ku, Tokyo, Japan, with sliding paper partitions, by Tanaka Juuyoh 2 Glass flowers by US glass artist Dale Chihuly, by Steve Snodgrass 3 Paper screens at Ryoan-ji, Kyoto, Japan, by Misty Granade
All from Flickr under CC BY license
