The largest clear-span wooden building in the world was built as a U.S. military air station hangar in 1942 to house six blimps. It is now the Tillamook Air Museum in Oregon.

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I wish I’d curated this show:

“Stripes are a fundamental visual element, appearing naturally in vertical lines as trees and in manmade products of all kinds, from street dividers to ornate fabrics.

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Essay below reprinted from In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki (Leete’s Island Books, 1977)

What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms—even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn.

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Hiyao Miyazaki, one of my favourite filmmakers, is the Japanese director of the animated movies Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Totoro. Of all his films these three are favourite, probably because they are the most Japanese in their aesthetic.

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Via Monocle. Thanks to Wilson Tang for pointing this out.

Twenty-nine Japanese families have found their version of happiness by creating their own idyll in a Tokyo suburb.

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The post Kinoka no Ie or “Wood-flavoured house” – alternative ecological housing in Tokyo appeared first on Ouno Design.

Make a crane or many and send to:

Students Rebuild
1700 7th Avenue
STE 116 # 145
Seattle, WA 98101

The Bezos Family Foundation will donate $2 per crane to Architecture for Humanity’s Japan relief fund. 

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Japan has had to endure far more than its share of natural and human disasters and far too much of the lethal wreckage they bring with them—as if one disaster alone wouldn’t be too much.

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The post The Stink Spirit appeared first on Ouno Design.

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.

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This is a Japanese tradition we desperately need to adopt in North America – re-using textiles to wrap presents. It’s an art form, but it’s worth learning because it dispenses with all the annoying and wasteful tape and paper and ribbon, it’s a fun skill to learn (for kids too), and it’s an educational conversation piece – you might have to explain to the recipient what it is, but that’s probably worthwhile.

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The post Furoshiki – Wrap holiday presents in the green, Japanese style appeared first on Ouno Design.

The word “ouno” is Japanese, which is partly why I chose it (that, and the fact that it’s an ambigram – see upcoming post). Before I ruined the Google Image search for “ouno” by clogging it with my own photos, these two images showed up, both from Japan.

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