Gil Schafer Crafts a Serene Yoga Studio
“You shouldn’t even be an architect if you haven’t been to Japan.” Thus a client admonished AD100 honoree Gil Schafer, who, indeed, had never been but planned to attend a conference there. Given the client’s and her husband’s latest request—to transform an unfinished, barnlike gym at their coastal Maine retreat into a Zen yoga and meditation studio—Schafer used the journey as a listening tour. “I like being given a new architectural language to learn to speak with some gracefulness and not complete clumsiness,” he says, adding that his excursion and in-depth research back home taught him “that you can say a lot with less—and as I get older, I’m trying to learn that.”
The 650-square-foot heart-pine structure that resulted stands amid a leafy grove, its spare elegance a vest-pocket echo of Katsura Imperial Villa, the acclaimed 17th-century country house near Kyoto. Inset linen panels, referencing temple screens, serve as a background for Akari light sculptures by Isamu Noguchi; a live-edge pine bench, sparked by George Nakashima furniture, occupies a corner near the front door. As for the floor, it is paved with custom-made tatami mats, around whose standard 2:1 ratio Japanese buildings are traditionally constructed. “It’s a completely different version of classical proportioning,” Schafer explains. “And, thank God, we had a great builder, because they fit perfectly.”
See More of the Zen Yoga Studio by Designer Gil P. Schafer
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
