Product Description

Built like a piece of fine furniture, the traditional Japanese house is universally admired for its clean lines, intricate joinery, and unparalleled woodworking. Focusing primarily on a new guesthouse in California, this elegant volume shows how a classic Japanese house can be built to offer the warmth and comfort that modern homemakers require.

Len Brackett, rigorously trained as a temple carpenter in Kyoto, has spent decades adapting the ancient Japanese design aesthetic to Western needs. Here he demonstrates step-by-step how both the traditional live-on-the-floor house, as well as models that accommodate furniture, can be constructed to provide such modern essentials as central heating, insulation, computerized lighting systems, and the latest electronics. This practical and inspiring guide-with gorgeous, clear photos and diagrams-is an indispensable resource for those who'd like to live in a Japanese home, for professionals who want to build them, and for any reader who delights in Japan's age-old aesthetic traditions.

200 illustrations, 155 in full color, 20 technical drawings

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46758 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"Book thoughtfully explores a culture of building in which even the smallest joinery detail is revered --and features lovely photos." -- Dwell Magazine, December 2005

"For anyone who loves the simple elegance of the traditional Japanese house, this book is a gift from the gods." -- Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House

"Len Brackett is a remarkable timber framer, whose Japanese-style buildings are literally works of art." -- Fine Homebuilding

"Lush volume...20 pages of detailed drawings...informative chapters on drawings, wood, joinery...you can almost smell the cedar scent." -- Sacramento Bee, July 15, 2006

"With more than 200 stunning photos and helpful illustrations...a winner...Single most important sukiya living book of 2005." -- Journal of Japanese Gardening, Nov/Dec. 2005

An account raisonné of the adaptation of the Japanese timber frame style in California...beautiful building...pictures are superb." -- Timber Framing Magazine

About the Author
Peggy Landers Rao writes on Japanese design and architecture. The coauthor of Japanese Accents in Western Interiors, she lives in Armonk, New York.

Len Brackett, who served a long apprenticeship in traditional architecture in Kyoto, has been building Japanese houses in the U.S. for 30 years. He lives in Nevada City, California.

Aya Brackett, Len Brackett's daughter, is a photographer and a photo editor at Dwell magazine.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One Design A deceptively simple cottage is tucked into the backyard of a home in California. Sheltered by towering trees, it is notable for two reasons. Although built in the 21st century, it exemplifies classic Japanese techniques and proportions refined over hundreds of years. Yet it also incorporates contemporary technologies and technical innovations for maximum comfort and energy efficiency. On entering the cottage, one's first sensation is the delicate fragrance of the cedar. Since the wood is unsealed, its fresh scent will last for decades. The finely planed surfaces invite touching, much like fine furniture. Visitors run their hands over the various woods – Port Orford cedar, sugar pine, Western red cedar, English walnut and American chestnut – and exclaim at their glass-like quality. The building is a small, private joy, giving no hint of its existence to passers-by on the street. Why and how was it built?

This book explains its construction – or more precisely, its evolution. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that Japan’s extraordinary architectural tradition can be a realistic choice in the modern world by presenting that process in detail, supplemented with examples from other Japanese-style houses built in the United States.

Customer Reviews

Informative Guide! (Adds a touch of logistical reality to creating a dream home)
For anyone who has dreamed of building a Japanese style house, this book is a must! The book takes you through the construction of a building from start to finish. All the things the customers and builders had to consider in construction. (From design, to permits, to materials,to assembly and finally finishing) This is a good way to get an idea of what building a traditional or westernized version of a Japanese house would entail, in terms of time and resources. It would also provide a neat book for house design to see the way traditional Japanese design styles have been incorporated to fit into American style homes.

One of the authors, Len Brackett, is the owner of East Wind which does Traditional Japanese Architecture and Woodworking. The beautiful woodwork this company does is extraordinary!! Len spent more than 5 years in Japan as a temple carpentry apprentice. The book also included an interesting chapter describing him time there. For more information on East Wind, (and to get a better idea of what the book describes) try visiting their website eastwindinc.com

A knowledgeable and "user-friendly" study of domestic Japanese architecture
Superbly illustrated with photography from Aya Brackett, Building The Japanese House Today by Peggy Landers and Len Brackett is an outstanding collection of beautiful and decorative architectural designs drawn from the Japanese traditional and contemporary architectural ideas and ideals. Deftly co-authored to provide a wealth of usable and informed perspectives, Building The Japanese House Today offers such particulars as preliminary design decisions for building a Japanese home; design directions based on living with or without furniture a chart showing the relative proportions of components of the traditional house; lumber selection, drying and milling; design and construction of a Japanese bath; technical drawings showing how to make traditional architecture conform to western building codes; sources and contacts for materials and craftsmen; and twenty pages of professional plans and diagrams to guide readers through the simple and elegant procedures of construction. A core addition to any professional or academic library Architectural Studies reference collection, Building The Japanese House Today is very highly recommended for non-specialist general readers searching for a knowledgeable and "user-friendly" study of domestic Japanese architecture.

A Revelation of Beauty
I should like to urge anyone contemplating the making of a house today to pause and study this book. Live with it for awhile before you proceed. Building a house is more than a personal satisfaction. It is an opportunity to create a work of serene and lasting beauty.

It is only rarely that a book falls into your life as a genuine revelation. Building the Japanese House Today is such a book. It is as if a gentle breeze from the East scattered all the remains of the broken promises of modernism, and replaced them with the new-worldly grace of this centuries-old traditional architecture.

Len Brackett is a Californian who served a full apprenticeship with one of the finest temple carpenters in Japan twenty-five years ago. Upon his return to the United States he set up shop building classical Japanese houses in the San Francisco Bay area and elsewhere.

Mr. Brackett quickly discovered that his clients had their own ideas, and that modern building departments and locally available materials made other requirements. It was then he began a kind of second builder's apprenticeship--to Making it Work in America Today. This book details the results: structures and spaces of a rare, ethereal beauty, at once classically traditional and yet surprisingly modern, descended directly from the Japanese.

Four hundred years ago, when the first Europeans laid eyes upon traditional Japanese houses, they described them as so fine they seemed to have been built by the hands of angels. Such exactly describes the impression one has of Mr. Brackett's houses. They succeed better than any houses I know at marrying an old world architecture with the opportunities of new world modernity. They are traditional Japanese houses, certainly. But they harmoniously agree with the lives we live today.

The book is straightforward. It tells the simple story of a modest building built by an honest craftsman. But what almost explodes off its pages is the possibility it represents of a new-made house culturally and spiritually worth living in.

Anyone interested in traditional Japanese architecture will be interested in Mr. Brackett's book. But I hope it finds in time a much wider circulation among those whose interests lie closer to home. It is a book about living, about what it means to lead a beautiful life that is true to our time, and how such a life may take shelter and sustenance from the house in which we live.