As soon as you step through the doors of the Mori Art Museum on your way to see ¡°Japan in Architecture: Genealogies of its Transformation,¡± the smell of kish¨± hinoki (Japanese cypress) ¡ª used for the grid frame installation ¡°Kigumi Infinity, Japan Pavilion, Expo Milano 2015¡± by Atsushi Kitagawara ¡ª beckons you to pick up the pace and hurry inside.
Behind this gate-like wooden installation, you¡¯ll find amazing examples of traditional wooden structures, such as scaled-down versions of Todaiji temple¡¯s Nandaimon gate and Toshogu shrine¡¯s Goju no To (five-story pagoda), displayed together with contemporary architecture they inspired, such as Arata Isozaki¡¯s ¡°City in the Air: Shibuya Project¡°(1962) and the Tokyo Skytree (Nikken Sekkei, 2012).
This first section looks at the lineage of the wooden culture cultivated in Japan, a nation 70 percent covered in forest, where techniques to make the most of timber have been developed and refined since ancient times. The exhibition includes ¡°Secret Books of Carpentry Techniques,¡± old scrolls that explain the design technique known as kiwari, which sets rules for determining the proportions of timber used in buildings. The technique was a closely kept secret passed down through generations of master carpenters, until it was eventually copied and surreptitiously distributed across Japan during the Edo Period (1603-1868), considerably boosting the general quality of Japanese carpentry.
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