Modelarea spaţiului şi semnificaţia locului în grădina japoneză versus grădina occidentală formală

Abstract

The shaping of the space, the design principles, the different compositional arrangements, the organization and matching of the natural elements with the artificial ones in Japanese garden versus Western formal garden, point out several interesting contrasting aspects between the two types of the gardens. If in the West, the interaction between the man and the environment is considered to be abstract, a relation of the type I-Object, in the East, it is conceived as a concrete, immediate relation, based on the interaction I-You. While the Western man fights with the nature, trying to dominate it, the Eastern man adapts himself to nature and adjusts to it. These two fundamentally different attitudes towards nature and environment may explain the way in which the space of the garden has been shaped and organised over time in Japan and Western countries, respectively.By tradition, the Western designers have been concerned with the elements of space enclosing –as a form of construction. The Eastern designers, on the other hand, have focused their attention on the quality of the enclosed spaces and on the intellectual and emotional influences of these spaces upon those who have perceived them. The Eastern people understood long time ago that the existence of significant spaces was influenced by the presence of the surrounding landscape, whose dimensions, shape and characteristics might determine the quality of the space. Making a comparison between the European desin system and the Oriental one, it is obvious that the mind of the Western people, by tradition, is concerned especially with the object or construction as it appears in the space, while the Eastern civilizations have considered the construction as a means of definig or making a space or a complex of significant places more distinctive. In the Western formal gardens the organization of the space was done depending strictly on the central building (the palace), with which it was organically connected, making a unique composition. On the other hand, the Japanese people have learned to design the space of their gardens – conffering it such a strong personal character –meaning to give satisfaction only through the presence of the person or the persons for which it was designed. In the Japanese art, the space has played a dominant role and has been considered a universal medium where life develops by permanent transformation, the place and time being just relative conditions.