Abstract
To reduce the time consuming work involved in traditional timber construction in Japan, the joinery is being rationalized. Besides employing rough hardware, traditional joinery itself is reduced to a number of types and simplified in shape. This is closely related to the mechanized production system and to the reduction of site labour. This paper analyzes such a simplification process of joinery and reveals its role according to the position employed. The analysis is made in two phases. Firstly, actual use of various joinery is surveyed quantitatively with regards to five stages of simplification. The very traditional construction requires numerous types of joinery, but as the simplification proceeds, certain types of joinery are used more often and complicated types diminish. As electric tools became popular, and automation increased the number of joinery types decrease. In the next phase, after the analysis of actual use of joinery, their shapes and functions are typologically categolized. The shapes have been evolved to ease labour and to improve the function as well as to achieve aesthetic symplicity. Categorizing the functions into three ; to put, to hook, to fix, we can see how various types of joinery can be grouped. It is thus revealed that each joinery consists of at least two functions and the simplification process takes place to minimize the types of joinery among the same group or to decrease the number of functions involved so that the shape can be simpler to produce or to work on site. Through this analysis, recent trends of simplifying joinery are clearly revealed in terms of form and function.
