We end the week of open windows - despite the wet weather here - with contemporary artist, Alice Mumford whose gentle, luminous paintings concentrate on light and colour. She often paints domestic interiors with open windows looking out onto gardens and seascapes in Cornwall; this is Anemones in the Window, Portscatho.

This is Open Window at Saint-Jeannet (c1926-27, Tate) by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) who painted some of the most sparkling, cheerful, and colourful scenes framed by an open window. It has been said that “Dufy never painted a sad picture", and this article argues that the fashionable, decorative, and illustrative nature of much of his work has meant that, unfortunately, his output has been less highly valued critically than the works of artists who have addressed a wider range of social concerns.

Vanessa Bell often painted open windows and doors with views from inside the domestic interior of places such as London, Venice, Sussex, and Provence. At Charleston Farmhouse where, despite the experimentation and expressive decor, daily life was actually rather ascetic and under-heated, the boundaries between the interior and the garden were often blurred, especially during the  summer months (even then it was rarely warm inside). View into a Garden (1926, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery).

This week we celebrate the simple joy of an open window in early summer, letting in light, breezes, scents, sounds that are often otherwise absent in cooler or cold weather when windows are firmly shut. David Jones (1895-1974), painter and modernist poet, is now largely forgotten but his war poem 'Parenthesis' is considered a masterpiece of WWI literature. He was an accomplished watercolourist and painted interior views through an open window on various occasions. This is his joyous, wispy, delicate Flora in Calix Light (1950, Kettle's Yard) which evokes the freshness of a summer's day. 

Space is at a premium in Japanese cities, and there is a growing trend for micro houses which are cleverly and very ingeniously squeezed into tiny plots. This is Love2 House in Tokyo designed by Takeshi Hosaka but there are many more to be marvelled at on sites such as Dezeen and in beautifully illustrated architecture books. 

Residential and other buildings in Japan need to be earthquake-resistant and-fire proof. In 1981, the stringent New Anti-Seismic Design Standard was enforced for new construction, and proved to be highly effective. However, the Great Hanshin or Kobe Earthquake of 1995 exposed construction flaws and prompted revisions, but in fact only 3% of the buildings which collapsed were post-1981. Japan has spent the last three decades developing and installing retrofit solutions to make older structures safer, for example by fitting internal or external bracing (as above). The earthquake-resistance of a residence is, unsurprisingly, an important selling point.