Wood, Time, and the Disappearing Craft

A visit to Jindai-ji Temple, Tokyo — March 2026

Standing in front of Jindai-ji last week, I found myself doing what I always do there: looking at the joints.

The temple has sat on this site in western Tokyo for 1,300 years. The same location and craft tradition have been continuously maintained since 733 AD, and not a single nail.

Japanese temple carpentry — miyadaiku — is built on interlocking timber joints precise enough that no fasteners are required. The wood moves with temperature and humidity. The joints flex under load. The structure works with the material.

What strikes me every time is that this knowledge was developed without computers, finite element analysis, or simulation. It was built up across generations through observation, failure, and refinement, passed from master to apprentice.

This got me thinking about my own field.

I have spent over 30 years in building design. When I began, we worked problems through using a pencil, paper, and calculator, from first principles. The calculations had legibility, logic, and a narrative. We could follow the reasoning line by line and defend it.

That is changing. Parametric tools, generative design, and machine learning are powerful, and I use them. But there is a risk that the underlying craft erodes. Engineers may become skilled at prompting and interpreting, without knowing how to frame the problem from first principles or sense-check an answer that looks plausible but is wrong.

The Jindai-ji carpenters did not abandon their craft when nails and steel became available. They retained it, refined it, and continue to produce structures that outlast anything put together with fasteners.

We do not need to choose between calculation and computation. But we do need to be deliberate about retaining the foundation: the ability to reason through a structural problem independently of the model. That is not nostalgia. It is how you know when the model is wrong.

1,300 years from now, someone may look at one of our buildings the way I look at those joints, recognising the intelligence embedded in its making. The question is whether anyone will still understand why it stands.