"An interpretation of this is shown in our illustration of the Katsura Gardens in Japan (1636). The deepest layer is understood as the coarsest and the 'roughest' zone, while the levels as they rise become increasingly geometric and delicate. The topmost plane consists of a footpath made of square-cut paving stones. Pale in color and casually combined, they seem to 'float' over the dark background. The next level is created by a gutter of natural cobblestones imbedded in the lowest level, which is the soil itself. These graduated depths must, at the same time, be seen as a part of a greater whole. One is really not completely at the bottom until one reaches the water level to which the path leads, nor quite at the top before one enters the house with its geometric carpet pattern. This conception of the floor's span from top to bottom, from water and ground at the lowest level to the ordered geometry of the house at the highest level, is at the same time an interpretation of the difference between outside and inside. The outside bears the stamp of primeval nature, the inside is the seat of humanity and greatest perfection, a place 'in which the spirit alone prevails'."

"Texture and the Layer Effect," Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen