OkinawaArchitectureArchitecture in Okinawa24 entries
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OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitectureNakagusuku
Nakagusuku-jo
Its curving stone walls are beautiful. Perry is said to have surveyed them and been astonished at their accuracy.
OkinawaArchitectureNakijin
Nakijin-jo
The seat of the king of Hokuzan. A wall 1.5 kilometres long runs along the ridge.
OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitectureTaketomi
Taketomijima
Red tiles and shisa, and streets of white sand. The island's code, utsugumi, has kept the townscape.
OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Bingata & Yachimun
Stencil dyeing that carries the colours of the south, and the pottery of Tsuboya. Kilns line Yachimun Street.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Sonohyan Utaki Stone Gate
Shaped as a gate but never walked through - a structure built purely so the king could pray at it before leaving the castle.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Kinjocho Stone Path
Part of a royal highway; 238 metres survived the war, walled in stone between great trees.
OkinawaArchitectureKitanakagusuku
Nakamura Family Residence
One of the few gentry houses to survive the war intact, its walls and windbreak trees complete against the typhoons.
OkinawaArchitectureNanjo
Sefa Utaki
A sacred site with no building: two fallen rocks lean into a triangular passage, and the sacred island appears at its end.
OkinawaArchitectureNago
Nago City Hall
Built to work by wind rather than air-conditioning, with 56 shisa on its walls - each named by a citizen.
OkinawaArchitectureTonaki
Tonaki Island Village
House plots are dug a metre below the lane to duck the typhoons - the whole village sunk into the ground.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Turtleback Tombs
Said to be shaped as a womb - the idea of returning to where one came from, built directly as architecture.
Naha
Red Tile Roofs
Plaster packed between the tiles to stop the typhoons lifting them - and that necessity produced the island's red-and-white roofs.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Markets of Naha
Markets and alleys descended from the postwar black market - unplanned, endlessly extended, and still trading.
OkinawaArchitectureNanjo
Utaki Sacred Groves
No buildings: a grove or a rock is the sacred place, marked by nothing but a stone incense holder - hundreds of them across the islands.
Okinawa
Koza and the American Era
A shopping district built under US administration; its English signage and American forms remain as a visible layer.
Nakijin
Villages of Nakijin
A screen wall stands just inside each gate to block sight and wind - a Chinese device that took its own form here.
OkinawaArchitectureNakagusuku
Masonry of the Gusuku
Stones cut into polygons and interlocked without gaps - a Ryukyuan method built on a different idea from mainland walling.
OkinawaArchitectureŌgimi
Former Ogimi Village Office
The oldest reinforced concrete building left in Okinawa, and one that stood through the shelling of 1945. A nationally designated Important Cultural Property.
Naha
Gardens of Ryukyu
Porous Ryukyuan limestone stacked among subtropical planting - neither the material nor the plants of a mainland garden.