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context: architecture > origins
Integration with Gardens
Porches and verandas were there from the first real buildings, linking the house with its environment, and this continued as the standard. The gardens were always part of the overall architecture, and it's arguably a mistake to separate them, as I have in my site structure. This integration has continued up to modern times, where courtyard gardens are still common (though decreasingly so, predictably) in cities. In Japan, the distinction between indoors and outdoors is less crisp than anywhere else - verandahs, sliding screens, paper, hanging curtains and so on, instead of solid walls. There will be links in places within the architecture section to individual parts of the gardens section, but I recommend looking through that as a whole as an accompaniment to this section.