A Continuum
How will we be living in the future? Kengo Kuma shares his thoughts on the future of residential design by looking to the past – from traditional Japanese architecture techniques, to sourcing local and natural materials.
As one of Japan’s leading architects, Kengo Kuma now counts over 250 realised builds both locally and internationally since founding his office KKAA in 1990. Kuma is generously collaborative and unassumingly meticulous. His calm and relaxed demeanour is a delightful contrast to his compact office with over 180 employees in Tokyo alone, and another 50-plus in Paris and China.
His work spans from large museum structures (such as the V&A Dundee in Scotland) to small projects such as the Starbucks café he created in Taiwan recently from a cluster of reimagined shipping containers. His innovative structures are as well known for their ingenuity in design and their diversity in natural materials, utilising local stone, bamboo, timber and washi (traditional Japanese paper).
“We start by trying to find the ‘theme material’ for the project – the perfect material for the place,” Kuma explains. “I don’t want to combine different materials. I try to use only one material that will be the protagonist of the project. I don’t start from the shape or silhouette of the building, but from which material is best for the location.” Kuma has always championed natural materials, and truly believes that they have a strong impact and influence on how we feel in a space. “Natural materials make us much happier,” he says.
KKAA’s private residential builds include Water/Cherry (East Japan, 2012), a project that employed local sukiya craftspeople to execute the interior’s intricate woodwork; and Lake House (East Japan, 2011), which utilised a stone in such a way that creates a gradation of colour reflecting the natural light and mist of the location. The idea was to feel as though you are floating within that same lakeside fog.
As an alternative option to the usual prefabricated residences, which are commonly made of plastics such as polyurethane, Kuma has completed an all-timber “prototype residence for the future” for a Japanese prefabricated housing company known for their development of a 120 x 120 module system. To showcase the pureness of that system, KKAA used the module for every wall and partition of the house but incorporated an additional joint unit into the grid screens. He expanded the system as a whole and the result is a lightfilled, harmonious space. Says Kuma, “By adding that small unit, we could make the module more dense, creating a more intimate interior space. Natural light is filtered by those wooden screens and creates an amazing effect.”
Japan has seen an influx of renovations to existing traditional residences through the modernisation of their architecture or the creation of additions. Notes Kuma, “I enjoy that kind of renovation project. If we can add something to a beautiful existing building, we can work together with the existing building – as architects. This is a very exciting process – to be able to work with the past architect.”
He also references traditional Japanese spatial design, drawing from the Edo period to the chise homes of the indigenous Japanese Ainu people, who would bear the harsh northern winters with strategic heat storage and natural energy-saving techniques that can be referenced in context today. Kuma details, “To live with doma [a traditional earthen floor connecting interior spaces], or use the irori [sunken stove] is very exciting for contemporary life. Because contemporary life is a kind of export from America in the twentieth century, it sometimes doesn’t fit our bodies and our climate in the way the irori and doma do.”
In 2011, Kengo Kuma created an experimental residence in Hokkaido in collaboration with architecture students (University of Tokyo) that tested built form in cold climates by integrating contemporary technological advances with ancient techniques such as those from the Ainu people. The same warmth achieved from the wood-and-membrane combination at the Memu Meadows Experimental House was later applied to an urban residential project, Mokumaku House in Niigata. The Memu Meadows house endures some of the heaviest snowfall in Japan, but the home’s interior warmth is maintained.
With close to 70 per cent of Japan covered by forests, timber is abundantly found in Kuma’s designs, and it’s one material he encourages fellow architects to use. “I think it is a responsibility of Japanese architects to use local wood. Still, the wood is more expensive than it would be in Russia or some other countries, but it is a small difference and the effect on the Japanese landscape is huge.”
“I don’t start from the shape or silhouette of the building, but from which material is best for the location.” Kengo Kuma