The 3rd edition of Shaping the City, a forum on sustainable urban development, took place in Venice between November 24-25, following successful events in Chicago and New Orleans. Organized by the European Cultural Centre, this forum was running in parallel to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial exhibition, Time Space Existence. The event, hosted at Palazzo Michiel del Brusà in Cannaregio, brings together global urban planners, architects, academics, and politicians. Notably, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was among the experts invited to explore the intersection of nature and the built environment in Japanese architecture.
Over two days, the conference set out to explore crucial themes such as education, urban commons, displacement, nature integration, and the future of architecture media, a subject discussed during a panel talk attended by ArchDaily’s managing editor, Christele Harrouk. While on-site in Venice, the ArchDaily team sat down with Kengo Kuma to discuss his unique approach to nature-inspired and site-specific designs.
During the talk, Kengo Kuma delves into one of the defining principles of his practice: the desire to create buildings by their specific cultural and geographic context. For each place, he strives to find the unique characteristics of a place and enter a conversation with it, allowing the design to be altered and adapted to these unique traits. This concept of prioritizing the context is applied to all the different typologies and scales of projects.
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Exploring Haus Balma by Kengo Kuma Architects in Vals, Switzerland Through the Lens of Paul ClemenceCreating harmony with the place is the basis of our concept; for each place, we try to find the difference and to respect that difference. We are enjoying the conversation with the place. A conversation with the place is sometimes a conversation with the local craftsman, the local materials, and the climate. For each project, we can enjoy this kind of diversity.
Materiality plays an important role in this conversation with the place. Kuma discusses his preference for wood and natural materials over the use of concrete and steel. As the defining materials of Modernism, these materials symbolize a style that seeks to erase the diversity of a place. In contrast, wood is intrinsically connected to the land. The use of local materials and wood also led to a different type of transparency than the one provided by glass. This is achieved through the gradual displays of materials, creating a fluid transition between the interior and exterior.
By using wood, people can find a friend in the building, because wood and us have a long history. As humanity was living in the forest, the memory of wood is very long and deep.
In the context of the Shaping the City event, Kuma also touched on the changing role of architects, pointing to the need to reshape people’s relationship with the natural world by changing the cities themselves. He talks about the Japanese wisdom of creating small gardens as a way of bringing natural landscapes into urban environments.
All of these principles are visible in the ongoing projects by Kengo Kuma’s studio. Among them, the design of the new Saint-Denis Pleyel train station in Paris, France, strives to break down the scale of the transportation hub by bringing in the natural landscape and creating a natural oasis within the city. Kengo Kuma & Associates has also recently won a competition to design a new visitor center in Butrint National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Albania’s Ionian coastline, and is among the shortlisted teams in a competition for a new music theater in Bergen, Norway.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on December 13, 2023.
