Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most
highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist
priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in
Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly
contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has
worked in ultramodern urban hotels and some of Japan's most famous
classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer of landscape
architecture is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a
Zen garden, "a special spiritual place where the mind dwells."
This beautiful book, illustrated with more than 400 drawings and color
photographs, is the first complete retrospective of Masuno's work to be
published in English. It presents 37 major gardens around the world in a
wide variety of types and settings: traditional and contemporary, urban
and rural, public spaces and private residences, and including temple,
office, hotel and campus venues. Masuno achieved fame for his work in
Japan, but he is becoming increasingly known internationally, and in
2011 completed his first commission in the United States which is shown
here.
Zen Gardens, divided into three chapters, covers: "Traditional Zen
Gardens," "Contemporary Zen Gardens" and "Zen Gardens outside Japan."
Each Zen garden design is described and analyzed by author Mira Locher,
herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.
Celebrating the accomplishments of an influential, world-class designer,
Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese
garden design and appreciation: how to perceive a Japanese garden, how
to understand one, even how to make one yourself. Like one of Masuno's
gardens, the book can be a place for contemplation and mindful repose.
