KENGO KUMA, born in Kanagawa in 1954, following the degree earned in 1979 at the University of Tokyo, continued his studies at Columbia University in New York.
In 1987, he founded the Spatial Design Studio, in 1990 Kengo Kuma & Associates in Tokyo.
His is poetry in design with a very specific policy: "Why do I like to parcel out materials to the point of reducing them to small pieces? Why do I break rocks, bamboo and rice paper into small strips? Why do I bore infinite holes into wood? The answer is that I like the tactile quality of materials. And only in this way am I able to appreciate them fully, to feel them vibrate." This is how he explains his architectural language and his passion for materials. Even before the building takes shape, in fact, he seems to choose the material and define a technical principle for its use. Once this element has been identified, all the rest seems to work itself out on its own: the shape, the structural technique, the light, the atmosphere, sense of sound, sense of permanence. He doesn't like to put different materials together, because his buildings are experiments on the theme of mono-materialism, pushed to its extreme. He is every careful with details, in the sense of transparency and space, the ability to put nature and artifice together.
For Kuma, architecture should never have to be coercive, but it should resemble a garden, "Because a garden doesn't have walls or windows, but it is only made of horizontal surfaces.
By definition, it shouldn't have boundaries." The point of departure is always the relationship between architecture and nature: he works on the continuous variations of things and signs that, once coded and built, stimulate our visual, tactile, auditory and even olfactory perceptions, because every material has its own scent. Light is, for Kengo Kuma, physical matter. To obtain this result, he suppresses, in many projects, both the essence of the wall as well as that of the window, substituting them with something hybrid, able to offer the necessary protection and light. The atmosphere that is inhaled is very important. The opportunity of seeing things clearly and unequivocally is never offered. Among thousands of nuances, illusion creates reality.
Among his most representative works we mention the Kyodo Grating (Tokyo, 1988), the Water/Glass House (Shizuoka, 1995), the Takayanagi Community Centre (Takayanagi, 2000), the Nasu History Museum (Nasu, 2000), the Institute of Disaster Prevention (Fujishiro, 2001), the Great Bamboo Wall (Peking, 2002), the Murai Masanari Art Museum (Tokyo, 2004), the LVMH Osaka (2004), the Lotus House (Hayama, 2005), Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum (2005), Y-Hutte House (East Japan, 2006), Ginzan Onsen Fujiya (Yamagata, 2006), Z58 showroom and offices (Shanghai, 2006), Chokkura Plaza (Tochigi, 2006)
He is currently working on the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, the Suntory Museum, the Dellis Cay Spa Resort, a living complex project in Suzhou, the Art Barn, a project for a modern tea house in Frankfurt and the Sunlitun Project-N1 Boutique Hotel. He has received numerous acknowledgements among which the Good Design Architecture for the "Yusuhara Visitor's Center" chosen by the Japanese Ministry of Industry and Trade (1994), AIA DuPONT Benedictus for "Water/ Glass" (1997), he received honourable mention from the Boston Society of Architecture for the Unbuilt Architecture Design 2000 (1999), and Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture, Finland (2002).