This thesis examines the connections between Japanese gardens, Modernism and Japanese-inspired gardens in New Zealand. The link between traditional Japanese gardens and Modernism is a familiar theme for scholars of architecture, design and landscape architecture. A less considered route of scholarship is the relationship between historical Japanese garden designs, Modernist-inspired gardens in Japan, and New Zealand garden design. A historical foundation provides a base on which to analyse any later changes or transmissions. By analysing the history of Japanese gardens and Modernism, through select key figures, one can also grasp their complexities and outline wider trends. Connecting these somewhat divergent entities is important due to the fact that these gardens represent a myriad of global translations. They represent the modernisation and globalisation of Japan and New Zealand as well as trends in New Zealand‟s artistic and cultural community. The success of the translation of Japanese traditions into New Zealand was due to, in part, the production of a regional idiom. New Zealand‟s Japanese-inspired gardens represent the integration of Japanese and New Zealand traditions, materials and ideas. The result is a hybrid garden, a garden which forms its own specific regional peculiarities which symbolises the many connections between Japan and New Zealand.

Meaning in the landscape is a concept that is receiving attention from many landscape architects asking the questions: how is meaning found in the landscape, or what makes a landscape meaningful? While there are many design processes that incorporate meaning into the design, it is the art of storytelling that the thesis investigates. The research for the thesis and a comparison analysis is performed on three texts, which explore meaning in the landscape. The three texts are Marc Treib's "Must Landscapes Mean?"; Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton's Landscape Narratives, and Mark Francis and Randolph T. Hester, Jr.'s The Meaning of Gardens: Idea, Place, and Action. Applying these approaches to case studies has resulted in the finding of common ideas between the three texts. The commonalities led to my position that storytelling can be used as an approach to design, and that landscapes designed as a story narrative can be meaningful. The design project investigated the strength of the position on a site in the West Potomac Park in Washington DC. The story for the project is a Japanese folktale that communicates the culture of Japan. The project is a case study that explores if the set of design principles within the storytelling approach can invest meaning into a landscape. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Abstract The research aims to investigate the spatiality of the sequential Japanese tea (roji) and stroll garden (kaiyûshiki), whose appearance reached its peak during the Feudal period in Japan (1573–1868), in relation to the perceiver's locomotion. The desire of that era to go beyond sensual beauty and to make a philosophical statement, led to the development of a garden where the moving participant perceives a series of successive fragmentary views. Such a concept of space, with the principle of successive observation, is a distinct feature of Japan, and can also be observed in urban design, architecture, painting and literature. This research is about the necessity of incorporating movement in the design of gardens, as a prerequisite for fully perceiving space. It thereby shows how through analysing those two distinct types of sequential spaces, the Japanese tea and stroll gardens, one arrives at patterns of spatial configurations that encourage active participation on the subject's part. Emphasising the environment-person transaction, the research aims to study the structure and features of the Japanese tea and stroll gardens as sequential spaces, with reference to the affordance possibilities they provide for an individual, as developed by the late James J. Gibson. Although not confined solely to it, the analysis used at the core of this research, is based on Gibson's ecological approach and on Harry Heft's contribution to ecological psychology. The empirical part of the research uses a variety of gardens as examples, as well as the case studies of a model teagarden and the garden of Shisendô (situated in the city of Kyoto). The research aims to acquire accounts of knowledge of techniques and spatial formations that do not ignore or minimise the central importance of the subject's movement, but on the contrary, fortify and take advantage of it. This body of knowledge can be an initial approach to designing sequential spaces in domains that lack the specific socio-cultural practices by showing some opportunities and potential affordances that every perceiver can pick up using his own background and cultural context.