Kevin Nute

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | UH Manoa · School of Architecture

The Constructed Other traces three recurring themes in Western accounts of Japanese architecture: a wish to see Western architectural theories reflected in Japanese buildings; efforts to integrate elements of Japanese architecture into Western buildings; and a desire to connect contemporary Japanese architecture with Japanese tradition. It suggests...

This article reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects, specifically between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer’s sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from i...

The word time occurs more than seven times as often as space in written English, yet in the design of the indoor environments where we now spend most of our lives these priorities are typically reversed, with time often being little more than an afterthought. Embodied Time endeavors to correct that imbalance by demonstrating how built environments...

The book expands on more than three decades of research by reexamining Wright’s interpretations of traditional Japanese forms in the context of otherness, appropriation, translation and myth. The book’s predecessor, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (London: Chapman and Hall, 1993) won an International Architectural Monograph Award from the American Ins...

Many architects are familiar with psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. Far fewer are aware of the final version, however, completed more than two decades after the first, or of the precise meaning of the need at the top of that final hierarchy, "transcendence." In the absence of deliberate built expressions of Maslow's notion of...

Indications of the passage of time are indirect reminders of our mortality. Humans have 7 often responded to this discomforting thought by attempting, temporally at least, to escape its 8 relentless march through the notion of a timeless present. This essay explores how architecture can 9 assist us in that objective. It suggests that there are at l...

Humans have been described as a “forward-looking” species in more than simply physiological terms. We are, it seems, unusually concerned with the future. This essay explores how built environments can be designed to evoke positive anticipation of future events. It suggests that there are three primary means of achieving this: (1) the visible displa...

This chapter makes the case that, by connecting us to the past, present, and future, the indoor environments where most of us now spend much of our lives have the potential to help address several important human psychological needs. We suggest that, as sources of recollection, indoor spaces can evoke feelings of security, belonging, and self-actua...

In 1972, the urban designer Kevin Lynch concluded the book What Time Is This Place? by suggesting that "these thoughts about how our environment represents or might represent the past, the present, and the future can be brought into better order if we look at how our bodies and our minds experience time-how time is built into us and. .. how we ours...

The Imperial Hotel was the largest and most complex building Frank Lloyd Wright completed, but its design has remained something of an enigma, an outlier unlike any of his other designs. This essay attempts decode the hotel in the unique cultural context of Taisho Japan and early modernism.

This paper uses the Zen-inspired medieval Japanese tearoom to examine the notion of buildings as artificial bodies. Through its gathering of unique objects in a specific place at a particular moment, the traditional Japanese tea ritual was intended to draw attention to the individual nature of all being, including our own. Through shared bodily con...

The subjection of patients and medical staff to environmental stress is an important but neglected aspect of healthcare design. This article argues that, in addition to the inevitable stresses associated with being ill and having to wait for treatment, many existing healthcare spaces also inadvertently subject both patients and medical staff to two...

It is widely believed that traditional Japanese buildings differed fundamentally from those of the West in actively responding to time. This article examines that notion by analyzing five arguments, based on language, history, and architectural elements respectively, that have been used to suggest that the traditional Japanese room was designed to...

This article reports the results of an experiment intended to test the effects of increasing the use of perspective visualizations in the early stages of building design. Compared to environments designed using plans and models, those generated using perspective views were found to have significantly greater variety in form, materials, light, and o...

Taoist and Zen texts contain a number of commentaries on the nature of materiality. This research explores how those observations might be applied to the design of built forms. It argues that the characteristics of materiality are particularly relevant to built form because materiality and its absence, space, are its fundamental components. The art...

The impact of Japan on Frank Lloyd Wrightʻs work explained in the context of the migration of ideas between cultures, and what this may tell us about the nature of the creative process.

While the Japanese pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Ho-o-den, has frequently been cited as a potential early influence on the young Frank Lloyd Wright, it is argued here that in the long term its primary significance for Wright's career as a whole may not have been directly architectural at all, but rather the elite...

This paper reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects; specifically, between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer’s sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from in...

This Here Now shows how traditional Japanese buildings acknowledge unique materialities, objects and events, and argues that the built recognition of these singular phenomena serves to affirm the individuality of all being, including our own. The book also shows how buildings can help us to transcend our individuality, by enabling us to share the n...

This exhibition, created in collaboration with Bundit Kanisthakhon and Kaylen Daquioag, uses the work of two modern American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and John B. Yeon (1910-1994), to illustrate how long-established ideas in one cultural context can serve as a source of innovation in another. The exhibit suggests that at least some...

The reuse of forms and ideas across cultures has recently become a topic of public debate. As a means of helping to define what, exactly, constitutes the misappropriation of culture, this research examines two conditions that seem central to potentially causing cultural harm: the significance of a form or idea in its original cultural context the...

The goal of this research was to determine whether visual cues in indoor environments could evoke positive connections to the past and present, and what, if any, psychological benefits might flow from such links. Subjects preferred spaces with sloping ceilings, hearths, and refuge and prospect to spaces without these features, and this was positi...

Over the last two decades the psychological benefits of mindfulness, a state of heightened awareness of the present centered on one’s own thoughts, have been widely reported. Typically this is achieved through deliberate meditation or during activities that require little or no direct attention. Such self-awareness is difficult to combine with task...

Practical methods for bringing the natural movements of sunlight, wind and rain indoors, during the COVID 19 lockdowns, and beyond. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/heres-how-you-can-bring-nature-indoors-when-youre-staying-home

The COVID-19 crisis is likely to change building design again. Its health effects have not only been physical but also psychological. Our early ancestors evolved mostly outside in constantly changing natural environments. Yet the indoor spaces where we now spend much of our lives separate us from that world. One of the lessons of the current lockdo...

Philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have long been interested in how we can overcome the inherently subjective nature of human existence to share experiences with others. A range of potential ways of transcending the limits of the individual human body have been proposed, from empathy to sexual relationships. Using examples drawn from tr...

Over the last two decades the psychological benefits of mindfulness, a state of heightened awareness of the present centered on one's own thoughts, have been widely reported. Typically this is achieved through deliberate meditation or during activities that require little or no direct attention. Such self-awareness is difficult to combine with task...

The expression of time is today widely believed to be one of the unique features of traditional Japanese architecture. This paper argues that many of the apparently temporal features that have been identified in traditional Japanese buildings, however, were in fact accommodations of change rather than conscious expressions of time per se, and simil...

Recognizing our physical characteristics forms part of our identity, and knowing where and when we are enables us to orient ourselves in the world. This paper argues that built environments can play a central role in helping us to meet these essential needs. It suggests that we can learn important lessons about how to architecturally affirm what, w...

This research uses examples drawn from the work of two modern American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright and John B. Yeon, to show how established traditions in one context can serve as a source of innovation in another. It shows how both of these designers translated two-dimensional spatial devices derived from Far Eastern decorative and pictorial ar...

The use of forms and/or ideas derived from other cultures has recently become a topic of popular debate and no small controversy. As a step towards helping to clarify precisely what does and does not constitute the misappropriation of culture, this study examines two characteristics that seem central to the issue: the “significance” of a form in it...

This paper surveys foreign accounts of Japanese architecture published in English from the reopening of Japan in the 1850s up to the year 2000. It shows how European and American perceptions of Japanese buildings evolved from initial dismissal, through acknowledgments of merit, to positive admiration in less than fifty years. It is suggested that t...

This conference presentation examines how indoor spaces could better connect their occupants to the present. It explains why this is psychologically and physiologically important, how extending the moment is central to the process, and how natural phenomenal movement could be a practical means of achieving it in the indoor environments where most p...

The expression of time is widely believed today to be one of the unique features of traditional Japanese architecture. This article argues, however, that many of the apparently temporal features to have been identified in traditional Japanese buildings were actually accommodations of change rather than conscious expressions of time, and similar cha...

Philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have long been interested in how we can overcome the inherently subjective nature of human existence to share experiences with others. A range of different ways of transcending the limits of the individual human body have been proposed, from empathy to sexual relationships. Using examples drawn from trad...

This conference presentation uses the examples of two modern American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and John B. Yeon (1910-1994), to show how long-established ideas in one context can serve as a source of innovation in another. It shows how these designers translated two-dimensional devices found in traditional Far Eastern art into mod...

This video-augmented book explains how the natural movements of the sun, wind and rain can be used to improve the well-being of people in buildings and raise awareness of sustainable living practices. In demonstrating how buildings can be designed to reconcile their traditional role as shelter from the elements with the active inclusion of their mo...

This paper reports the results of a preliminary investigation into whether indoor environments that evoke positive associations with the past, present, and future could be psychologically beneficial for building occupants. Subjects were asked to numerically evaluate a series of drawn images of rooms in which a range of visible temporal cues was ind...

At the close of the 19th century, when the United States was still largely looking to Europe for the lead on architectural styles, the young Frank Lloyd Wright was firmly of the belief that America should develop its own unique architecture, independently of the Old World. This research suggests that, ironically, a key inspiration in the developm...

Natural outdoor environments are known to reduce human stress, but most people in the developed world now spend more than 90 percent of their lives inside buildings, and the most common means of attempting to bring nature indoors - interior planting - is significantly less beneficial to human health than its outdoor equivalent. The work presented h...

Natural environments are known to be good for us, yet most people in the developed world spend the majority of their lives inside buildings, and the most common method of bringing nature indoors, interior planting, has been found to be significantly less beneficial than its outdoor equivalent. This paper explains how the movements of the weather mi...

Modern architecture has dedicated much of its discourse to crystal-ball gazing - dwelling on the visionary and the speculative. Conversely, Kevin Nute, Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, puts the case for the present over the future and the past. To enhance experiences of the present, he describes how architects can harness the...

This video-animated ebook explains how the natural movements of the sun, wind and rain can be used to improve the well-being of building occupants and raise awareness of sustainable living practices. In demonstrating how buildings can be designed to reconcile their traditional role as protection from the elements with the active inclusion of their...

Many of the indoor spaces where most people now spend the majority of their time inadvertently deprive them of contact with two key requirements for their long-term well-being- nature and change. With the aim of improving the health and effectiveness of people in buildings at the same time as helping to sustain the natural environment, the research...

This works examines the effectiveness of weather-generated change in indoor environments on occupant stress and attention. It was found that wind-animated light had a significant calming effect on heart rate, and was less distracting from a task than a similar artificial pattern.

That Wright was an avid collector of Japanese prints has long been well known, but its role in his architecture remained elusive. This research shows how the breaking of the picture frame Wright saw in the prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige had a direct influence on Wright's destruction of the three-dimensioinal box and the blurring of built and natur...

The buildings of the self-trained Portland architect, landscape designer and conservationist John Yeon (1910-1994) are known for their close affinity with their natural surroundings. This relationship has been compared to that of traditional Japanese buildings and gardens, which have been sources of inspiration to western designers since the end of...

Guest Lecture

The Japanese tea room is analyzed as an instance of a consciously designed activity-dependent space. It is suggested that its identity as a place rests primarily on the unique presence of guests and utensils assembled for each gathering, and as such exhibits parallels with both scientific space-time and websites, which only "exist" when someone vis...