KUMA’S QUIET STADIUM AMONG THE TREES STANDS EMPTY
Architects, says the man behind Tokyo’s modest, harmonious Olympic Games venue, should be ’very shy’, writes Alastair Sooke
In 1964, the year Japan last hosted the Summer Olympics, 10-year-old Kengo Kuma went to Tokyo with his father to look at some of the new venues built for the Games. Until then, little Kengo, who loved cats, had dreamed of becoming a vet. But the moment he set eyes on Kenzo Tange’s spectacular National Gymnasium, with its sweeping suspended roof and undulating concrete base, he changed his mind: he would become an architect.
More than half a century later, Kuma — now 65, and one of the most respected architects of his generation — has designed his own Olympic arena: the 60,000capacity National Stadium for the 2020 Games that, were it not for Covid-19, would have been starting this month.
One can only imagine his frustration when the Olympics were postponed to 2021. Speaking via Zoom from Tokyo, he says, rather than ruing the devastation caused by the disease, he’s concentrating on how it could spur a change for the better: “We should be thinking about the future of humanity,” he says.
The genesis of Japan’s R21bn National Stadium has been fraught. Eight years ago, the competition to design it was won by British architect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016. As opposition to her futuristic plan mounted, and costs spiralled, she was removed from the project, and Kuma — who suggested a modest alternative with a lower silhouette (think: humble wooden napkin ring, in place of Hadid’s aerodynamic bike helmet) — was appointed instead.
The problem with Hadid’s plan, says Kuma, was the stadium’s sensitive location in Yoyogi Park, next to Meiji Shrine — “one of the most important shrines in Tokyo. And the stadium sits in a sacred forest adjacent to the shrine.” According to Kuma, Hadid’s “tall building”, clad in a “neutral white material”, simply did “not fit with the forest”. Whereas, his design — which, at 47m, was less than two-thirds the height of Hadid’s — “tried to show respect” to the stadium’s hallowed surroundings.
In homage to the nearby forest, the exterior of Kuma’s stadium consists of up to five layers of gigantic overhanging eaves — evoking, as he says, a “five-storey pagoda” — built using timber, including cedar and larch, from all 47 prefectures of Japan. The terraces have also been planted with more than 47,000 trees, representing 130 different species, so that, as Kuma puts it, the entire arena is a sort of “living tree”.
“I wanted to create a symbol of the Japanese respect for the environment,” Kuma says. “Traditionally, in the forest, people didn’t make big buildings, but always wanted to create in harmony with their environment.” As statements go, then, Kuma’s stadium is a deliberately muted contrast to the 1964 arena that inspired him. These days, Kuma says, “People’s needs are the total opposite.” What we want in 2020 is “quietness” and “environmentally friendly” buildings, he says.
Harmony with surroundings is the goal of everything Kuma designs.
Over the years, he’s worked with various materials and in many styles and is known for his longstanding love affair with wood, which has become something of a signature for his firm of about 300 employees in Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai and Beijing. “Wood is a magical material,” Kuma says.
This may have something to do with growing up in a traditional
Japanese house, with ricepaper screens and a wooden frame, built by his grandfather.
He laments Japan’s postwar revolt against wood. “Before the Second World War,” Kuma says, “Tokyo was a city of wood. The size of the city — ceiling heights, the width of streets — was determined by the limits of wood, and so Tokyo had an intimate human scale. But, after the
Second World War, we had many natural disasters that changed our society.” As a result, Japan’s building code was altered, with wood effectively outlawed.
“It was very sad for our city,” Kuma says. “Structures in concrete and steel with no limit on dimensions came to dominate Tokyo. And I believe that the human body doesn’t like that kind of huge scale.” In his own architecture, Kuma says, he aspires to the “humanisation of our planet”.
He’s always had an unfashionable passion for simple, low-lying buildings. In the late 1970s, he went on a twomonth field trip across the Sahara, researching villages whose “beauty”, he says, has never left him. He established his own practice in Tokyo in 1987, during the economic boom, but when the bubble burst, Kuma spent the so-called “lost decade” of the 1990s working in Japan’s countryside. “I learnt many things from craftsmen. They understand the magic of natural materials.” Traditional techniques — using fermented persimmon juice to waterproof external washi (Japanese handmade paper) walls, coating the ends of wooden girders with powdered shellfish to protect against water erosion —characterise Kuma’s designs.
In the countryside, Kuma refined his architectural philosophy. He started using surprising phrases, such as “defeated” or “weak” to describe his architecture. Architects, he once said, should be “very shy”. He became convinced that the “goal of society” in the 20th century — to construct “outstanding, symbolic buildings, to make skyscrapers” — was fundamentally out of step with people’s needs and desires.
As a result, Kuma, unlike many famous “starchitects”, has no interest in letting “the ego of the artist” dictate a building’s form.
Critics call his work “anti-monumental”. Often, he “dematerialises” buildings by cladding them with small modular elements such as thin strips of wood, ingeniously suspended roof tiles, or panels of precast concrete — sometimes called his “particle aesthetic”.
He says it took 20 years for the world to come around to his vision, and only now do “people want to understand my aesthetics and method”. Natural materials like wood are back in favour. “Definitions of happiness and richness are changing. People no longer want to own huge apartments. They want to enjoy small spaces.”
Kuma’s celebration of littleness has been vindicated by the pandemic. “Most people are working from home now,” he says, “so big office buildings aren’t needed any more. We can go in a totally different direction, away from big boxes and big towers.” This is, he adds, “a new attitude, a new phenomenon. The world is changing.”
Think of that next year, when you tune in to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Tokyo.
‘Definitions of happiness and richness are changing. People … want to enjoy small spaces’