Fox Friday: Japanese Joinery

Japanese architecture is admired around the world for its wood craftsmanship. The intricate ways that wood is put together, along with the exposure of raw wood, combine to form an aesthetic and tectonic language that lends poetic expression to vernacular and modern buildings alike. Foundational to Japanese wood construction are the hundreds of sophisticated wood joints deployed by master carpenters across centuries. This workshop explores methods of crafting Japanese-style wooden joints using modernist architect Seike Kiyoshi’s The Art of Japanese Joinery (first published in 1970) as a guide. Participants will use Japanese carpentry tools to create individual models of one or more of the 48 joints documented by Seike to gain hands-on experience with the art of Japanese joinery and a greater appreciation of wood as a raw material.

Instructors: Dr. Michelle L. Hauk and Bruce Lindsey

Michelle L. Hauk is an assistant professor in architectural history and theory at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Trained in both architectural design and history, she specializes in the history of architecture, technology, and society in twentieth-century Japan. After earning her Ph.D. in Japanese History from the department of East Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University in 2023, she spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. Hauk earned her MArch and MSAS from WashU in 2015. Her research examines the evolution of the dwelling in twentieth century Japan through the lens of water and the technologies that organize its flow. She considers the ways in which the design of water within domestic environments intersects with social relationships, cultural practices, and the natural environment.