wabi-sabi
The most incidental detail
Bells
Most Japanese bells when hung still have on them one or more rough lines obviously arising in horizontal mold joints. These lines are not removed in fettling the bell, and they seem to be regarded not as defects but rather as a reminder of the reality of the founder’s interaction with his materials. One is reminded of the ceramics that are most treasured in Japan which usually have some unexpected tool marks or irregularity resulting from a kiln mishap.
Roughness
Roughness is the odd shape, the quick brush stroke, the irregular column size or spacing, the change in pattern at the corner – it is adjusting to conditions as they present themselves with meaning, but without ego or contrived deliberation.
Though it may look superficially flawed, especially with human perception accustomed to mass-produced regularity and perfection as a goal, an object with roughness is often more precise because it comes about from paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less.
Wabi-sabi
Sabi is an aesthetic term, rooted in a given concern. It is concerned with chronology, with time and its effects, with product.
Wabi is a more philosophical concept, a quality not attached merely to a given object. It is concerned with manner, with process, with direction.
Optical Glass House
A Building by Hiroshi NakamuraA façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery. To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass. The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy. Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.
How the light gets in
A Quote by Leonard CohenThere is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.Is perfection boring?
An Article by Ralph AmmerWe love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.
The Abode of the Unsymmetrical
The decoration of our classical interiors was decidedly regular in its arrangement. The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection, however, was different. The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself. Since Zennism has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme Orient has purposely avoided the symmetrical as expressing not only completion, but repetition.