KUMA

From his Great (Bamboo) Wall house to the Japan National Stadium for the Tokyo Olympic Summer Games, originally planned for 2020, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma pioneered a truly sustainable approach to contemporary architecture, translating local craftsmanship and resources into a new tactile architecture. Discover the scope of his practice-defining oeuvre in this XXL monograph.

After Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, and Fumihiko Maki, Kengo Kuma has breathed renewed vigor and lightness into Japanese architecture. Departing from the modernist skyscraper of the 20th century, Kuma traveled through his native Japan to develop a truly sustainable approach, translating local craftsmanship and resources into site-specific, timely buildings. Informed by tradition, and with both feet firmly planted in the present, this “materialist” heralds a new tactile architecture marked by its engaging surfaces, innovative structures, and fluid forms, reconnecting people with the physicality of a house. Kuma’s objective, above all else, is “just to respect the culture and environment of the place where I am working.”