Rae Lowe

Located within one of Japan’s renowned landscape gardens, Kairakuen, in Ibaraki Prefecture – one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan – stands the three-storey wooden building of Kōbuntei. At its heart lies the Throne Room, which opens onto the East and West Lacquered Halls, their dark floors reflecting the light filtering through the veranda’s low eaves.

As much as the surfaces it illuminates, light is a material itself, tracked through space to reveal its manipulation and exploitation by human hands Light travels in straight lines relative to us, with the fewest bounces resulting in the brightest light.These straight lines are rays; when a ray hits a surfaceit is reflected, deflected or absorbed.