ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the enclosed garden as an imagined place as well as a material space, a representation of ideas, a place for us to negotiate around, and contemplate, as much through absence as presence. It considers the garden as a condensation of nature, a distillation of ideas, where the design and the fabric of the surrounding building make a significant contribution to its presence. The quality of the building can only be fully appreciated by us moving through the spaces. It was originally also dependent on ritual and silence, and the interpretation of the rules imposed by the Cistercians, to consider the problems of the individual maintaining his solitude within the community. The chapter analyses two designs that rely on an all-encompassing system of beliefs about life, conduct and the cosmos: Cistercian architecture and the enclosed Zen dry gardens of Japan.
