Interview: Kengo Kuma - sharing the same shadows


The Japanese architect talks to Clare Farrow about growing up in a traditional wooden house in the suburbs of Tokyo, and the ways in which technology can reinforce the relationship between architecture and nature


Blueprint

Kengo Kuma is a little embarrassed to show me a black and white photograph (c.1959) of a man sitting on the veranda of a traditional wooden Japanese house. Dressed in a Western-style shirt and jacket, he is smiling as he helps a little boy take off his coat, uncovering a traditional-style velvet jacket. A structural post, rising to the eaves, makes a play of shadow patterns on the steps, beside the shadow of his father. The little boy is Kengo Kuma.

Kuma speaks of receiving 'many hints' from Japanese building traditions and gardens, as well as the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Smithsons. But the strongest influence on this now globally recognised architect was the 1930s house where he grew up, in Kanagawa, a prefecture that was heavily bombed in 1945, and underwent rapid urbanisation: 'It was an old wooden house in the suburbs of Tokyo, [which were] newly developed after the war: an aging house, ordinary, but quintessentially Japanese.

' He was very conscious as a child of the difference between his house of wood, rice paper and interior soil walls (which would drop particles of earth, like powder, onto the floor), and the modern concrete-box apartments of his friends, shining with aluminium and fluorescent lighting: 'My house felt out of place at that time.' Kuma was impressed by modern technology, especially the concrete and steel structures designed by Kenzo Tange for the Tokyo Olympics (1964). Concrete seemed to be the future for Japan.

Kuma

His father, a businessman, was also interested in modernist architecture, collecting furniture designs by the German-Jewish architect Bruno Taut, who had fled Berlin in the 1930s and opened a shop in the Ginza district of Tokyo. His father was constantly extending and changing their wooden house too, and Kuma came to realise that it had a freedom that his friends' apartments lacked: '[It was] with this house I learned the nature of architecture.' His choice of phrase is apt.

In Japanese writing, the word for nature, 'shizen', contains two characters (from ancient Chinese): the first meaning 'one's self', the second, 'the cycle of the sun, water, and living things'; and it is this old connection between humanity and nature that a traditional Japanese house encapsulates. The all-important roof resting on a wooden frame opened up the possibility of non-loadbearing movable walls, screens, and materials such as paper and textiles. The wood was used for its 'softness' [Kuma's term], colour, flexibility, and fragrance, and the human scale was emphasised by the dimensions of the tatami mat. It was this modular, fluid concept of space that inspired the symbiotic relationship between Japanese design and Western modernism, which saw Gropius went to Japan in 1954, and Le Corbusier cited as the primary influence on the 1960s Japanese modernists Kenzo Tange and the Metabolism movement. Tange recognised the gap however between 'advancing technology' and 'the unchanging human scale', supporting Metabolism's vision of urban expansion through forms that mirrored organic growth. For example, Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) translated cell patterns into detachable concrete, steel and glass capsules. Nature was on the agenda, but not in terms of materials.

Formed in the School of Engineering at Tokyo University and New York's Columbia University, Kuma's thinking changed when he was forced by the 1990 economic crisis to leave Tokyo for the countryside, working with Japanese craftsmen on small-scale projects. He learned to value natural materials, the aging of wood, and to re-think architecture's connection to humanity: 'The Metabolism movement themed on aging, but it focused only on the period of growing and expansion. In my design I am emphasising the aspect of aging, or the time of shrinking ... Things decay and disappear. The role of architecture is to remind people of this fact, and to show how things can age beautifully.'

The idea of impermanence and disappearance is central to Kuma's philosophy, and makes sense in the face of post-war concrete buildings that have not aged well - the residents of Nakagin Capsule Tower voted to demolish it in 2007, though the debate with Kurokawa continues! A s Kuma says, '"Permanent architecture" is impossible to begin with.' His words also connect to the human experience of life and mortality, and in this sense Kuma's work is about a kind of material empathy. He describes concrete as 'too strong' for the human body, instead proposing 'weak' buildings that correspond to the 'fragile' presence of humanity.

Même Meadows Experimental House, Hokkaido, Japan, 2013, 79.50m2

Même Meadows Experimental House, Hokkaido, Japan, 2013, 79.50m2 Photo credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

His experiments with 'weak' materials - including bamboo and 'membranes' (his Même Meadows Experimental House [2011] comprises a translucent envelope of Japanese larch and polyester fluorocarbon membrane on insulating earth) can be compared to the cardboard technology of Shigeru Ban. Both architects share a profound respect for nature, magnified by the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami - as Kuma says: 'The natural disasters made me even more humbled towards nature. Before its absolute force, you can only respect it and dare to confront it - that is my continuing attitude in designing.'

Kuma differs to Ban however in that his buildings are not necessarily 'weak' through his choice of materials, he uses stone, aluminium and steel plate too, but through his breaking down the structure and 'materiality' into fine 'particles' - elements like those in traditional Japanese design. He describes - like practical poetry - how in Japanese houses the spaces between the small elements of wood, rice paper, sometimes stone, allow air to enter in freely, and how a material's qualities only become visible when broken up with emptiness and light. He has spoken before of vertical lines of rain, citing the influence of Hiroshige's painting People on a Bridge Surprised by Rain on his Hiroshige Museum of Art.

I asked him if thought of the structures in nature too - honeycomb, or crystals. 'Light is the most important element that exists in nature. When I design, I think carefully how the light could play and be taken in the structure and its environment. The idea of honeycomb and other structures is the result of relationships between the light and the nature of the site.'

Shang Xia store, Beijing, China, 2012

Shang Xia store, Beijing, China, 2012 Photo credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

In his Shang Xia store (Beijing, 2012), the interior structure is like a transparent screen, through which colours are intensified - like a red umbrella in snow. 'Colour is of course an important element comprising environments, but I do not design architecture where colour itself comes first and says things. For me, materials and their materiality matter more, and I believe the colour red looks vivid in Shang Xia because of the extruded aluminium lattice we used.'

Pineapple House

Design for Pineapple House, Taiwanese pastry shop (Pineapple Cake), Omotesando, Tokyo, proposed date for completion December 2013 Photo credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

Kuma's theories are evident in two upcoming commercial projects in Japan: a Taiwanese pastry shop in Tokyo (Pineapple House, December 2013), in which a diamond lattice of hinoki wood (Japanese Cypress) screens the building like a canopy of trees; and the Sogokagu Design Center in Mie prefecture (completion June 2015), in which organic curves and a central 'ambiguous' void 'connect the building and nature'. Kuma is also experimenting with display proposals, including the suspension of furniture designs in the air; and is 'trying to use urethane foam as a finish material' - like clouds: 'What I aim for is not to decrease the relative weight of the materials, but to remove an air of intimidation. I believe buildings should not overwhelm people.'

Sogokagu Design Center

The notion of a void is pivotal in Kuma's 2013 Besançon Art Center and Cité de la Musique in France, in which an all-enveloping roof unifies the two pre-existing buildings, forming a 'shade of trees' in-between - a space where the wind from the river can pass through. Using a wood and steel structure, the roof is a 'woven mosaic' of local wood, stone, glass and vegetation. In another French project, the Frac Museum, Marseille, pivoted particles of recycled enamelled-glass present like a textile, materialising and dematerialising in the light - a demonstration of Kuma's 'disappearance' and 'erasure' that contrasts to 'literal "transparency"': 'In "intimate transparency", materiality and transparency are inseparable, and that is the big difference from modernism,' he says. Kuma has also created a spiral 'alley in the sky', with 'sky stages' that connect to the city. I t seems poetic but when describing it he is pragmatic: 'I do not bring any particular philosophy or literature into the work of designing. That would not do you any good. I only think of the relation between the site and the architecture.'

Besançon Art Center and Cité de la Musique, France, 2013, 10,000m2 photo Stephan Girard courtesy Kengo Kuma and Associates

Besançon Art Center and Cité de la Musique, France, 2013, 10,000m2 photo Stephan Girard courtesy Kengo Kuma and Associates

FRAC contemporary art center for the region Provence Alpes Cotes d’Azur, ‘a three-dimensional version of the “museum without walls” invented by André Malraux’, Marseille, 2013, 5,757m²

FRAC contemporary art center for the region Provence Alpes Cotes d'Azur, 'a three-dimensional version of the "museum without walls" invented by André Malraux', Marseille, 2013, 5,757m²

Kuma's thinking is exemplified in his V&A design for Dundee (due 2015). The angled lines - suggesting origami - are in dialogue with the water, though financial and marine engineering factors prevented the structure from floating as Kuma wished: 'We thought that the two axes - the line from the town and of the waterfront - would be the key and the design reflects this notion.By the existence of the "screen" between the outside and the inside the sense of "transparency" is enhanced - which comes back to "intimate transparency". To some eyes this may seem Japanese, but to others it may feel very contemporary... Glass is definitely an important material to express water - the well-known Karesansui dry landscape garden uses stone to represent hills and streams without water, and nowadays, the glass plays the same part as the stone. As for the V&A, located on the waterfront, we imagined a cliff facing out to sea.'

Credit: V&A at Dundee

Photo credit: V&A at Dundee

It's a good image to illustrate Kuma's own position in contemporary architecture. At Tokyo University, he encourages students and colleagues in 'various kinds of research and experiments seeking new materials, along with designing', and an emphasis on sustainability: 'To keep up with science and technology is essential in architecture. I would like to see that the development of technology be applied to reinforce the relationship between architecture and the environment.'

Credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

Photo credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

One experiment is with bamboo: 'I rather think bamboo is the one that should be used more in an urban setting. We used bamboo for the exterior at the Nezu Museum in central Tokyo. From our research with experts and past projects, we developed a system of the bamboo being used as the structure applying shaved bamboo to plywood], as well as the material. I would like to use more bamboo in our projects for cities.'

Kengo

It is in the smallest projects, however, that Kuma has the most freedom, such as Hojo-an (Kyoto), inspired by the 12th-century poet-monk Kamono Chomei - a portable hut of cedar wood, ETFE plastic sheets, and magnets in 'a kind of tensegrity structure': 'I am interested in the "mobility" of buildings - as a human being, like other creatures, who keeps moving. What matters is its lightness and easiness. Because of its materials and structure, Hojo-an can be constructed in the reach of human scale.'

Hojo-an after 800 Years, temporary portable hut, Shimogamo Jinja Shrine, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, 2012-13, 9m2 photo Kengo Kuma and Associates

Hojo-an after 800 Years, temporary portable hut, Shimogamo Jinja Shrine, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, 2012-13, 9m2
Photo credit: Kengo Kuma and Associates

Aske if he see architecture then as a kind of shelter he replies: 'I would call it a nest. As you see in other living creatures, they build their nest and the nest also impacts on the animals living there. It is not only a function to keep you "inside". We must remember that the nest itself has its qualities or characters, and your mind is influenced by that.'

Looking again at the black and white photograph, it seems that Kuma's work is in essence about not forgetting. He shows that architecture and humanity share the same shadows, the same light, the same nature, the same space, and should not be afraid to share the same fragility and mortality - the impetus for life. As if to demonstrate this, he shows me a new design, for a pavilion at the Château la Coste, Provence, in which a steel spring weaves a path in and out of the trees - as he concludes, with simple poetry: 'The spiral moves according to people walking, and to the wind.'








Progressive Media International Limited. Registered Office: 40-42 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8EB, UK.Copyright 2024, All rights reserved.