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The V&A Dundee Museum designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma is a massively dramatic stone-and-glass building. Located in the Scottish coastal city of Dundee, it will be the first institution outside of London to associate with the famous "Victoria & Albert" name and is the... View full entry
The boutique hospitality chain, Ace Hotel has announced it will open its first-ever Japanese outpost next year with a Kengo Kuma designed building in Kyoto. According to the company's president, Brad Wilson, "it’s been [a] long-standing dream to put down roots in Japan." "We feel incredibly... View full entry
Rejecting flashy forms in favor of buildings in harmony with their environment, the architect — poised to become world famous for his stadium for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo — is trying to reinvent his entire trade. [...]
Kuma, a constant source of paradoxes and ironies, often makes demagogic statements on behalf of his own brand of architectural modesty. “I want to change the definition of architecture,” he told me; in a way, he already has.
— The New York Times Style Magazine
Nikil Saval pens a beautiful profile of Kengo Kuma for T Magazine and investigates the architect's ongoing quest to ground his version of Modernism in authentic Japanese craftsmanship. View full entry
The $600-million project, called 1111 Sunset, would include high-rise condominium and apartment towers, town houses, shops, restaurants and two acres of public open space designed by James Corner Field Operations, the landscape architect behind New York’s High Line elevated park. [...]
The 98-room boutique hotel is to be designed by Kengo Kuma. It would be the major Los Angeles project for the high-profile Japanese architect known for melding his structures to their natural surroundings.
— Los Angeles Times
Image: SOM/Palisades.First announced last October, the redevelopment of the William Pereira-designed former Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District HQ, right on the edge of Downtown Los Angeles and Echo Park, is further taking shape. Besides new renderings of the 1111 Sunset Boulevard... View full entry
Kengo Kuma is one of Japan’s most significant living architects, thanks to his sophisticated integrations of traditional architecture with up-to-the-minute technologies. Unusually sensitive to materiality and technique, Kuma’s designs are irresistibly tactile, often resembling hand-woven... View full entry
Dignitaries at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games will obviously get the best seats--those made of wood--but ordinary common folk will have to make do with plastic. — Asahi Shimbun
Less than 1 percent of Tokyo's Olympic Stadium seats will be wooden. Those will be allocated for the best views of the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as track and field events. The country's timber industry has been advocating since 2016 to install wooden seats for all the spectators as a... View full entry
Ten years after a Dundee V&A museum was first considered, the finishing touches are being applied to the exterior of the £80.1m building ahead of its opening next summer. [...]
No amount of artist's impressions and computer-generated fly-throughs could have prepared the city for the true size and scale of the imposing design of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who will inspect the building on Wednesday.
— BBC
Kengo Kuma was in Scotland today to inspect construction progress on the impressive V&A Museum of Design Dundee he designed. Video via V&A Dundee on YouTube He seemed very pleased, stating: "As an architect, seeing a completed building can be stressful, as some times the quality isn’t... View full entry
Kengo Kuma & Associates have been commissioned to design an "eco-luxury hotel" building perched above the railways of the Paris-Rive Gauche district. Part of a larger development, the building is meant to serve as a landmark for the neighborhood. Credit: Luxigon / Mir “In the context of... View full entry
Tokyo has held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) national stadium that will host the 2020 Olympic Games.
The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, and other dignitaries attended the event on Sunday at the site of the demolished national stadium that was used during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. [...]
The ceremony ended with a video showing how the stadium is expected to look and function once completed by November 2019.
— The Guardian
A quick refresher, here are just a few instances of the Tokyo Olympic Stadium saga in the Archinect news:Kengo Kuma selected for new Tokyo Olympic StadiumKengo Kuma & Toyo Ito rumored to be designers behind new Tokyo Olympic Stadium proposalsTokyo Olympics refusing to pay Zaha Hadid for work... View full entry
A striking circular building at Darling Harbour will house a new City of Sydney library for the area’s existing and incoming residents, following an agreement with Lendlease.
The six storey community and retail centre, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, will be built by developer Lendlease at Darling Square.
— the City of Sydney
The Office of the Mayor of Sydney announced that the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma will design a new multi-use building at Darling Square that will include a two-level library. The developer Lendlease will build the timber-swathed structure.“I am very pleased that the City has reached an... View full entry
As last week's episode was taken up by Pritzker-hooplah, this episode takes a look back at the major news items of the last week(ish) and gets you caught up with what's been happening in Archinect news.We discuss: the recent photo exhibition on homelessness at USC (which closes tomorrow!); the... View full entry
“In the design, I would like to say there are no similarities at all,” Kuma told reporters when asked about Hadid’s claims. [...]
“The conditions set for the competition mean that automatically some similarities emerge ... the concept is completely different, so it is absolutely a different building, despite the similarities”. [...]
Hadid’s office is reportedly consulting lawyers, and said it would “take legal action if our concerns are not promptly addressed to our satisfaction”.
— theguardian.com
For more on the contentious issue of architectural copyright and intellectual property, make sure to check out:"Never the Same River Twice" – Experimental preservation and architectural authorship with Jorge Otero-Pailos, on Archinect Sessions #47Should architecture strive for originality? Can... View full entry
The organisers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are refusing to pay a British architect for her designs for its main stadium unless she gives up the copyright and signs what amounts to a gagging order, it has been claimed.
Zaha Hadid Architects, which won the original contract to build a state-of-the-art national stadium in the Japanese capital, has reacted angrily to the attempt by the Japan Sports Council to effectively seize ownership of the copyrighted designs.
— the Telegraph
New details continue to emerge from the dispute between Zaha Hadid Architects and the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which is rapidly shaping up as one of the most acrimonious conflicts that the profession has witnessed in decades.According to the Telegraph, the Japan Sports Council (JSC)... View full entry
Unlike Lego bricks, which are plastic, Tsumiki pieces are made of Japanese cedar (and manufactured using wood certified by the Forest Stewardship). And unlike the brick-shaped Lego blocks, each Tsumiki block is shaped like an inverted “V.” Triangular notches in the legs let the Tsumiki blocks wedge together, making them versatile like Lego bricks, albeit not as sturdy; some of the assembly models shown in Kuma’s Tsumiki brochure look about as solid as a house of cards. — wired.com
More related news:Kengo Kuma selected for new Tokyo Olympic StadiumLego to ditch oil-based plasticKengo Kuma: "Architecture can initiate communication among people."Could Lego Architecture Studio actually be useful for architects?Knowing Kuma View full entry
Next Wednesday, January 13, the 2016 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize will be announced. The winner will receive the Pritzker's bronze medal, $100,000, and an avalanche of "what does this mean for architecture" media attention. Check back here for the winner announcement first thing... View full entry
