Yoji Sasaki
Born into a family of artists, Yoji Sasaki seeks to bring art and landscape architecture into the same plane of consciousness and application.
The gardens Sasaki designs change in appearance from moment to moment. Using symmetry and patterning, he designs abstract planes on which living plants, daylight, and shadow emphasize temporality and express mutability.
In 1989, Sasaki opened the design fi rm Ohtori Consultants Environmental Design Institute in Osaka, Japan. His published works include: the corporate garden for NTT Musashino Research and Development Center, 1999; Keyaki Plaza, 2000; the official residence of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, 2001; and the Vertical Garden City, Roppongi Hills.
Sasaki studied landscape architecture and design at Kobe University and Osaka University in Japan. He was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Now he is a professor and head of the department of landscape architecture at the Kyoto University of Arts and Design.
We enter the garden on a path of stepping stones that cuts through a plane of decomposed granite. Sasaki drew the shapes of the trees that he wanted for his composition before going to the nursery—where happily he found exactly the right examples of Pinus thunbergii (Japanese black pine) and Pinus nigra (Austrian black pine). Especially important is the curve of the fourth tree from the right as we enter the garden. It directs our eyes to the mountains beyond the site. The texture and color of a green Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) contrasts with the rusted metal of the meditation box, which we enter by stooping—in the fashion of a Japanese tea house. The stones leading into the box are particularly important for establishing a serene mood of inevitability that is anything but inevitable. Each element has been carefully chosen for its effect, particularly for its ability to point to or register the ever-changing aspects of nature—shadows, wind, borrowed scenery, and material texture.
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