The thin lip of a teacup To give the building a sense of the delicacy associated with such crafts, as well as a feeling of warmth, I designed louvres from white porcelain panels, and used them to cover the outer walls. The louvres are tapered, to make their tips as fine as possible. (In fact, making tips as thin as possible is one of my key design principles: the thin lip of a teacup allows a better experience of the subtleties of tea - this is always at the forefront of my mind when I pay such close attention to edges.) Kengo Kuma, My Life as an Architect in Tokyo edges
An edge is an interface An edge is an interface between two mediums. Edges are places of varied ecology. There is hardly a sustainable traditional human settlement that is not sited on those critical junctions of two natural economies. Successful and permanent settlements have always been able to draw from the resources of at least two environments. Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture As a kind of gateway edgesmedia
As a kind of gateway Historically, Japan's shrines have been built in order to worship the gods who live in the sacred mountains or seas; They don't reside in the shrine itself, but in the space beyond it. This belief that the spirits and deities exist beyond the confines of the shrine, and that the shrine itself acts not as a centre, but as a kind of gateway, is very different to the grand, imposing churches and cathedrals of Christianity. The majority of shrines are not found in the mountains or in the middle of the fields, therefore, but at the borders of mountain villages – which is to say, at what is seen as the edge of the mountains. The tori gate, marking the entrance to a shrine, indicates that there are gods on the other side of it. Kengo Kuma, My Life as an Architect in Tokyo An edge is an interfacePaths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks religionedges
Holistic and prescriptive technologies Holistic technologies are normally associated with the notion of craft. Artisans, be they potters, weavers, metal-smiths, or cooks, control the process of their own work from beginning to finish. Using holistic technologies does not mean that people do not work together, but the way in which they work together leaves the individual worker in control of a particular process of creating or doing something. The opposite is specialization by process; this I call prescriptive technology. Here, the making or doing of something is broken down into clearly identifiable steps. Each step is carried out by a separate worker, or group or workers, who need to be familiar only with the skills of performing that one step. This is what is normally meant by "division of labor". Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology That which requires caring craftprocessmaking