Designing the New Pavilion Part 1: Aspect

By Yukari Yamano

The Garden View from the top of the North End (Picture by David Rosen, 2017)

In November 2023, the Arboretum Foundation and Seattle Parks and Recreation revealed preliminary designs for a new pavilion at the north end of the Garden. The pavilion was envisioned as part of the original Garden design back in 1959 but never realized. This blog series will explore some design principles that are being incorporated into the new viewing structure.

Atsushi Ueda*, a well-known Japanese architect and scholar, once wrote about his experience living in London. When he was looking to rent a place to live, he remembers always asking his realtor, “Which direction does this window face? Where is the south?” The realtor, with a puzzled face, always answered, “I don't know.”

Ueda wrote that he had the same experience in Paris and Germany, and that he thought Europeans generally do not care about which direction houses or rooms are facing. He speculated that because they experience so many rainy or cloudy days in autumn and winter, Europeans do not expect to warm rooms with sunlight. He said it was a pragmatic thing and made sense.

Valuing South-Facing Rooms

Japanese people tend to value south-facing rooms more than north-facing ones. They think living rooms and children’s rooms should face the south. When it comes to the tatami mat rooms, they absolutely think it should face the south.

(As it happens, southern Europeans have similar ideas. For instance, Ancient Greek and Roman homes were designed to be south-facing in order to trap solar heat.)

Ueda said that the preference in Japan dates back the Yayoi period (300 BCE), when Japanese people started worshiping water and the sun as deities. During this period, their lifestyle changed from a migratory one based on hunting and gathering to a more settled one based on farming. Rice cultivation began at this time, and water and sunshine were crucial elements for a good harvest. Also around this time, village leaders started living in stilt houses with elevated floors, and the doors of these faced south, evidently to allow for worship of the sun.

This predilection for south-facing rooms continued through the centuries. Residences of the nobility in the Heian period (from 794 CE) and those of the samurai generals—as well as Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples from the Kamakura period (from 1185 CE)—typically had rooms facing a sizable garden situated on the south side of the property.

Japanese Garden Pavilion Aspect

In 1959, Juki Iida and Kiyoshi Inoshita created the design for the Seattle Japanese Garden. Inoshita’s concept drawing of the Garden included a pavilion at its North end that was never built, due to budget constraints. The Pavilion opened to the Garden from the south side, to create a spectacular view of the pond and distant woodland areas.

It is conceivable that the designers intended for the main room of the building to fully capture the sunlight, in keeping with traditional Japanese home and garden architecture. Perhaps their intention was more than just pragmatic, and they were also thinking about a viewing structure that would allow for visitors to engage more spiritually with nature in the Garden.

Hoshide Wanzer’s preliminary designs for the newly proposed Garden pavilion honor the original vision of Iida and Inoshita, providing a south-facing overlook that captures the bright, panoramic view the Japanese masters intended.

In the next post of this blog series, I will discuss the Japanese traditional element of “Engawa” that is incorporated into the new pavilion design.

*Atsushi Ueda 上田篤 2005『日本人の心と建築の歴史』、鹿島出版会 P.247- 255

Yukari Yamano is an event coordinator at the Seattle Japanese Garden and a native Japanese.