GARDEN JAPAN 2000

Garden Japan 2000 was an exhibition on the traditional and modern Japanese garden held in Stuttgart in March 2000. It was sponsored by ifa, the Institute for Foreign Relations of the German Government and designed by the Institute for East Asian Architecture and Urbanism in Kyoto.

The Exhibition space was divided into two unequal parts, different in sound, light and ambience. The exhibition presented the Japanese garden with the help of electronic media and recent publications only.

The front space was kept light; it contained wooden benches covered with red felt cloths. They were placed underneath large red Japanese parasols. Attached to these umbrellas were laptop computers which offered journey through a thematically ordered sequence of still pictures of Japanese gardens. By visiting and melting with these creations by Japanese gardeners, it was intended to create a feeling of global connectedness and synchronicity. A short version of it is available here.

The back space was kept dark; it was indirectly illuminated by a screen on the back wall on which a slide show was running with music. This video, named Seas of Moss — Rocks in Sand, was made up of a sequence of images of Japanese gardens, pictures from traditional Japanese ritual and festivals and from screens of the medieval townscape of Kyoto, a city historically referred to as “The Capital of Flowers”.