Transforming Garden Spaces into Japanese Courtyard Paradises with The Art of Tsubo Niwa

After climbing the hillside via the pathway, visitors arrive at the Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Courtyard that accommodates the new Cultural Village. On one side of the Courtyard, a small “vignette” garden known as Tsubo-Niwa (courtyard garden) greets visitors, providing a symbolic and organic “relief” amongst the geometric architecture.

Occupying very little actual space, this tiny urban garden nevertheless incorporates each essential element of a Japanese garden: stone, water, and plants. It unobtrusively places nature as the central focus of the Cultural Village.

The tsubo-niwa is a garden style that originated in small open spaces between the buildings of temples and aristocratic dwellings as far back as the Heian period (794-1185) and by the middle of the 16th century they had become a feature of many of the urban dwellings of the townspeople who sought to include a touch of nature in the smallest available space of every home.

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00:04 Tsubo Niwa