Mini Dictionary
Mini Dictionary of Architecture
The building techniques behind the hotels, read one at a time with diagrams.
- The steel inside the red brick: steel-framed brick constructionSteel built into brick walls, with steel-framed floors: a way to make brick work in earthquake-prone Japan.
- Separating the building from the ground: how seismic isolation worksA structure that places an isolation layer, such as laminated rubber bearings, between building and ground so that shaking reaches the building less.
- White that comes from stone, and returns to it: lime plaster and decorative ceilingsA finish of slaked lime with fibre and seaweed glue that hardens slowly by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air.
- Stronger, without changing a thing: how seismic retrofitting worksStrengthening an old building for today’s earthquake standards without changing how it looks.
- Architecture that loosens formality: how to read sukiyaA residential style that borrows from the tea house: no nageshi rail, half-rounded posts and earthen walls for an easy lightness.
- Beyond the 31-metre line: skyscrapers and hotelsHow Japan’s 31 m height limit gave way to flexible-structure skyscrapers, and what that means for hotels.
- A division of labour between push and pull: reinforced and exposed concreteConcrete, strong in compression, combined with steel bars, strong in tension. Exposed concrete shows the marks of its formwork.
- Joining wood, building in wood: Japanese timber todayJapanese timber construction: joints that lock wood to wood without nails, and how building in timber is spreading again.