Pocket Gardens: Contemporary Japanese Miniature Designs

by Michael Freeman, Noriko Sakai

Called tsubo-niwa after a unit of measurement that is two person-sized tatami mats placed side by side, the pocket garden has been a part of the Japanese architectural canon for thousands of years. Undergoing a modernization in the last few decades in which a new generation of architects began experimenting with the concept in imaginative ways, the contemporary garden follows a distinct yet global aesthetic, whether as an urban solution to importing nature, as an individual theme set within a larger garden space, or as a buffer between property lines of a house or apartment. Beautifully illustrated and designed with a reflective, contemplative aesthetic, the book offers a broad array of miniature garden designs, including Keno Kuma’s explorations of materials as diverse as andesite and plastic, Takeshi Nagasaki’s art installation gardens with stepping stones of cast glass and bronze, and Yasuhiro Harada’s mobile cube gardens—plantings in stainless-steel trays on wheels that can be stacked and rearranged at will.

Genres: Gardening

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Michael Freeman is a professional photographer and author. He wrote more than 100 book titles. He was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. He made the break from there in 1971 to travel up the Amazon with two secondhand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures extensively in the Amazon volume of their World's Wild Places series, including the cover, they encouraged him to begin a full-time photographic career.

Since then, working for editorial clients that include all the world's major magazines, and notably the Smithsonian Magazine (with which he has had a 30-year association, shooting more than 40 stories), Freeman's reputation has resulted in more than 100 books published. Of these, he is author as well as photographer, and they include more than 40 books on the practice of photography - for this photographic educational work he was awarded the Prix Louis Philippe Clerc by the French Ministry of Culture. He is also responsible for the distance-learning courses on photography at the UK's Open College of the Arts.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring forms and play with water

[K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a light overview of a wide variety of tiny Japanese gardens. Browsing through this book (not just pictures, but reading the text, too) provides a font of ideas for texture, composition, and design, applicable for any discipline.

[Manintheboat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very stark and monochromatic.

[elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I like the aesthetic, sometimes I find it too harsh and clinical. Nature shouldn't seem cold.