The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has taught at the Columbia University in the United States and is currently a professor at the University of Tokyo, where he supervises research projects on architecture and urban planning.
In 1997, Kuma won the Japanese Institute of Architecture Prize. His firm employs more than 150 architects in Tokyo and Paris, and his work seeks to reinterpret Japanese and Asian building traditions for the 21st century.
He produced his first work in France after winning the competition for the future Cité des Arts et de la Culture in Besançon, then created the FRAC in Marseille and the astonishing Conservatoire de musique et de danse in Aix-en-Provence with its façade of anodized aluminium panels in the form of origami.
Kengo Kuma & Associates’ project Under One Roof won a competition at the Lausanne Federal Polytechnic (EPFL) for the design of new pavilions for various programmes connecting science and culture.
The architect has provided some thoughts on the relationship between human buildings and nature: ‘Natural disasters have always had an impact on the development of civilisation, but no cataclysm since the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 has been as powerful and devastating as the one that struck Japan on 11 March 2011. Despite the great strength of the built structures, the tsunami flattened the Pacific coast of Tohoku in a matter of seconds. In its wake, the Fukushima nuclear accident revealed the limitations of supposedly massive, solid architecture. Concrete and steel were no match for radiation – a sad irony, for since the Lisbon disaster nuclear power had become a key part of our growth strategy.’
He adds: ‘Now that this process has broken down, we have to start from scratch. Well before the March 2011 tsunami I was already weary of the massiveness of concrete and steel buildings, whence my design of several small-scale works. These projects enabled me to work independently, with local materials, and free myself from powerful authorities – instead depending entirely on nature and the power of the location. I feel there’s an emerging global movement in favour of small objects. We’re no longer just passive players influenced by a titanic but unreliable system. We can all start by building our own nests, creating our own energy and drawing on our immediate environment. A new relationship is developing between people and places.’
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