[Kimberly de Berzunza]

After class I watched the video that was shared in the chat about the New Gourna Village, and I found it really interesting in a couple of ways- I love Hathy's desire to use local materials to build for the people, and I love that they were well-insulated and ventilated to protect people from the intense heat. The concepts are important- why was the material so inappropriate? And it reminds me of the Frank Lloyd Wright homes that are falling apart or kept together only by constant maintenance, and I just wonder, can we ever build in a way that's environmentally sound, good for people, and also sturdy and durable?  And until what point SHOULD we work for the conservation of these sites?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

I love this idea, Thomas! Thank you for sharing it.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

I love the way you expressed your thoughts about time here- I think that quite often! I think about it as "telescoping."  And I also agree about the value of even a few moments of meditation- the purpose is to refocus, recenter ourselves. Sometimes this can be achieved briefly.  If I can have a moment or two to look at something beautiful and peaceful, calm my mind and refocus on what matters in the world, or on just being, I see this as a positive.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

As I read the article about feng-shui and the Beijing courtyard dwellings, I wondered if feng-shui didn't make it to Japan, or if it transformed into other similar concepts?  On the one hand, we see the courtyard idea in both cultures, and the private family space protected toward the back or on upper floors, but I have not seen any mention of directionality or management of Qi in Japanese spaces.

Also, the directionality in China makes sense, but does it change on this side of the Pacific? My water flows west because that's where the ocean is. Does that change all the orientation principles?

My husband wondered about expanding the houses as families grew- specifically thinking about China. If two or three sons stay in the family home, do they expand the house? And if so, how does that affect the feng shui?

A question I had about the open nature of the Japanese moveable walls was regarding security- were there not issues of people breaking down flimsy shoji walls? Also, I get the summers are hot, but the winters are cold... weren't these homes awfully cold?

I would like to know more about the pit dwellings. Are these just in that one place? How are they for size, comfort, etc? Are there conservation efforts to protect them?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Ha! When I read this comment I didn't get it because I hadn't read the article yet, but you are so right! That's funny- is there actually a connection here?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

I'm intrigued by the concept of the garden as an abstraction, as art to be contemplated. Also I am left thinking about modern attempts to create zen-inspired Japanese gardens that are not really for the same purpose... what I am left wondering is, is there anything wrong with that? And also, it is really NOT for the same purpose? I have been to the San Diego Japanese Friendship Garden many times, and take my students there every year. When I go on my own, I feel calmed by the visual aspects of different tones of green, grey, and brown, the stone lanterns and short cropped grass, the gravel raked into waves and the beautiful rocks that were specially selected and brought from Japan for this purpose, the sound of the waterfalls in the koi pond and near the tea house, the concentration required to follow the winding path, and the discovery of small pleasures as I walk around each turn.  There are places to sit and contemplate, and if you are lucky, to empty your mind.

When I take students, we study these various elements and consider the vertical and horizontal aspects of design, the symbolic use of turtle and frog shapes, the specific variety of pines that are pruned so only the needles pointing upward are left, the trees whose branches are bound in a way that they will grow more horizontally, the selective use of splashes of color against a larger palette of green and grey, and lanterns, bridges, and sculptures. We also discuss the mix of Buddhist and Shinto features. I'm always afraid these 12-year-olds will be bored, but it is always one of their favorite experiences. I am wondering, though, what might I add to this field trip to make it more meaningful?

Finally, I have visited the Japanese garden at the Huntington Library, and while it is beautiful, I did not find it as peaceful as the much smaller one in San Diego.  I wonder if Dr. Bharne has thoughts on why this might be?  Is it something about the way it is laid out?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

First, I feel so honored to be singled out for reference in the video! I love the indoor/outdoor concept and think it fits well with our San Diego lifestyle also. I have been in homes with huge folding panels of glass that can be opened up to the patio, and this image reminded me of those houses. We always have our doors open to our patio as well.

I am very interested in and curious about the aesthetic of darkness.  I have been to that temple with the thousand golden statues, and I have been to Kinkaku-ji, but I never considered the gold aesthetic in terms of light-dark or anything other than just the value all cultures seem to have always placed on gold.  The noh mask was fascinating to me! I had no idea this was how noh masks worked, and now I really want to see more of it.

I also look forward to learning more about wabi-sabi. I had heard this term before but though it was something different- more like yin-yang. I'm pretty pragmatic myself, so I don't like having things that can't be used.  I want to know more about this as an aesthetic.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Having grown up in Washington state, in families that built their own houses, wood construction was all I knew until I was an exchange student in Argentina in high school.  When I showed them pictures of my house, my grandparents' house, etc, everyone remarked on how "cute" or "quaint" or "picturesque" the houses built of wood were, but didn't it just mean they weren't really meant to last? After all, our "history" was fairly short, right? (Native Americans didn't count.) I had never thought about these things before.  My husband is from Mexico- same ideas.  So it is interesting to me to consider how the use of wood became the main and preferred construction material in Japan, allowing for different types of architecture that would not have been possible with stone or brick, yet still requiring a lot of maintenance and also with a tremendous environmental impact.  I am fascinated by the cantilevered roofs mimicking trees! I look forward to more discussion of these points in class.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Nice point, Jackie. I guess it's the same principle as building an ice sculpture or a sand castle or Indian rangoli designs in powder? Process? Impermanence of everything?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

This reading was challenging for me because I have little context for all the Japanese names and also for architectural terms. However, it did help that I've been to several of the temples and to Himeji castle, so with that background and the beautiful images, I was able to make sense of it.

Several points stood out to me as particularly interesting, and things I can use with 7th graders:

• The pillar as the central axis between heaven and earth and a connection to ancient tree-worship and visitations of kami spirits
• Arrival of monks and temple artisans bringing architectural purpose and design from Korea (we are always looking for connections and influences, transfer of ideas)
• Shrine of Nikko as combination of styles: Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine, Stupa tomb- so interesting! And so colorful and ornate and different from most of the rest
• Integration of climate and geography in building into hillsides, or logs contracting to allow breeze in, gardens as part of building (this from video, but also stands out at Kinkaku-ji)
• The castle as a symbol of power, tea house as a symbol of serenity- 7th graders can understand this easily
• Edo era decline of samurai class and increased wealth of merchants and commoners as relates to buildings and built environment is a great connection and point of discussion, and...
• Baths, theatres, restaurants during Edo period connects nicely with Rome
• Unique elements- use of wood, movable walls, impermanent use of space, transparency, monochromatic trend
• The repeated, systematic rebuilding of important places- this also happened all over Mesoamerica- most of the famous pyramids are now known to be multi-layered, like Russian dolls, and were built one on top of the other, generally every 52 years. This could be an interesting topic for discussion.

I'm excited to put these ideas together and think about how I can tie them in with what I teach, to make my content more interesting and appealing to 12-year-olds!

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

There is a really good lesson from History Blueprint's Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World on Indian influence on art and architecture in Southeast Asia, and the Sanchi Stupa and the Borobodur Stupa are one of the examples.  I use this lesson (starts on p. 25, above link) with my 7th graders.  I am excited to have added information about the purpose of that shape as relates to Buddhism, and also to have a better explanation for the transition from "the Buddha was a man and should not be worshipped; anyone can do it with enough dedication," to being worshipped as a deity... So I LOVED the extension to pagodas, and the contrast of the vertical and the horizontal. It makes so much sense, and will be a great addition to my lessons! I'm starting to get ideas...

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Within a day or two of our class, my husband happened to be flipping channels and watching something on PBS that showed these massive projects in China where land that had been destroyed for CENTURIES was cleaned up, re-terraced, re-irrigated, planted, and now is productive land for the previously destitute farmers who were trying to eke out a living before and now not only have food and a decent home, but were able to send their sons to college.  They showed another project that restored the Yellow River to the point where it was no longer yellow (at least in that part that they showed.)  It was interesting timing to see this after our discussion, and I told my husband what we had learned. He was surprised! (At the information- he's used to me learning things and bombarding him with it!)

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Wow, first of all, I had no idea there were cities like Venice in China, and towns full of coloseum-shaped apartment complexes. Those both struck me as very interesting.  And that reminded me of a question I'd had previously, in regard to the extent to which cities are intentionally designed with either beauty or function, or both, in mind, and the extent to which they rise and grow spontaneously into something we might find beautiful now.  I'd be interested to pursue this a bit more in our upcoming discussions.

Another surprise for me was the listing of slums in the list of urban landscapes, because, connected to my question/observation above, slums seem like something that rise organically, not as a result of planning. But obviously they are a clear part of the urban landscape of any city.

I am also curious about these themed towns or neighborhoods in Shanghai- European, American, and whatever... it does seem very Disney-fied, and I'd like to understand better why you feel this is not the right way to look at it- I'm not sure I understood your reasoning in the video.  Not that it's a bad thing in any case, but I wonder if life is lived differently in those neighborhoods, more in keeping with the cultures from which they are borrowed? Because if design is connected to function, and different cultures live differently and this is why their homes, workplaces, and cities are designed the way they are, what sense does it make for them to build in a way that doesn't align to their cultural priorities for daily life?

In Wheatley's article, The Ancient Chinese City as a Cosmological Symbol, the practicality of the life we live on Earth stood out to me in the sentence "The essential Asian mode of urban design was, as it were, refracted through the lens of a Great Tradition whose primary concern was with the ordering of society in this world rather than with personal salvation in a future life."  I found this curious here, but later it was followed by, "...simply expressions of the doctrine which viewed the Emperor as the great mediator between Heaven and Earth, the Son of Heaven whose appropriate locale was at that axis of the universe which was also the axis of the kingdom and the only site for an imperial capital..." It makes more sense in keeping with the article if we see the Emperor as a Son of Heaven, ruling over this life on Earth, that he would be at the center of the city. This article sparked another, albeit related question to my first: Are cosmic beliefs more central than beauty and order in the design of a city, or are they part of and a determinent of what can be considered beauty and order by a society?

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Hi Everyone! My name is Kimberly and I teach middle school US History, World History, and AP Spanish at a Spanish Immersion school in San Diego- so I teach History in Spanish.  I am the kind of person who likes to know about everything, so I have a pretty decent breadth of knowledge but very little depth in most, so I try to dive into the depths of different topics when I can.  I guess my own areas of focus have been Latin American history and politics, and Colonial history of North America.  I love to travel more than almost anything, and in Asia I have been to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, Malaysia, and India as a student on Semester at Sea in college.  This past summer my trip to Mongolia was put on hold, but I took an online course here on the Two Koreas, which was fascinating.  I also took Gender and Generation in Asia last summer onsite at USC.  My school district is fully online still for the forseeable future, with entire year-long courses crunched into two, non-consecutive 9-week sessions, so I recently decided to move my Asia unit to my spring quarters in order to give them more time.

I look forward to this course and to meeting all of you virtually.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Thinking more about CLOY, I wish there had been more character development of Cap. Ri.  I want to know more about what he thought about South Korea, and what he thought about his own country after having been outside it, both before when he was in Switzerland and later.  I want to know how he sees his government in light of the murder of his brother and complicity of his father in government actions.  How could he be in the same forces that killed his brother?  Does he think this is just one or two rogue actors, or is it a systemic problem? Is he trying to bring it down from within, or simply avenge his brother's death? Or is it just an obligation since his brother is now gone?  If that's the case, how does he get out of it at the end? Why is he allowed to travel abroad after all he did previously?

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