The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has advocated for architecture that reconnects the urban world with nature in his Foros series conference, organised by the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona). The conference took place on Friday 17 May in the Aula Magna at the University. Speakers also included Jordi Viñals, chief project Manager at Kengo Kuma & Associates, and Lorenzo Chelleri, researcher and lecturer at UIC Barcelona and president of the Urban Resilience Research Network.
Felipe Pich-Aguilera, architect and lecturer at UIC Barcelona, opened the conference. In his introduction, he recognised Kengo Kuma’s work as demonstrating that “it is possible to project into nature.” “As a society, we need a new paradigm. Architecture should be a catalyst to achieve this change and turn what society expects into reality,” he added.
During his speech, Kengo Kuma explained that when undertaking a project, “we seek the relationship between the building and its environment, between the urban world and nature.” His studio bases design and construction in architectural traditions and local landscapes. “Traditionally, materials would have come from the immediate environment. In the twentieth century we have forgotten the systems that linked us to nature and there a division between the urban and its natural environment has developed,” he said.
“Our intention is to connect with the natural environment both from the conceptual point of view and from the use of materials,” he said. The Japanese architect presented several examples of how this proposal materialises in his projects: with the use of materials such as wood or bamboo from the surrounding forests; avoiding excavations and large displacements of earth; experimenting with wooden mounts without nails, or devising façades with straw blocks, recovering local construction techniques.
Kengo Kuma & Associates studio finds inspiration from natural elements from the context of each project, such as the generation of libraries whose interior is like a forest (Yusuhara community library) or museums with facades reproducing cliffs (V&A Dundee, Scotland). It is also inspired by the urban and cultural context, such as for the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense, Denmark, which emulates wandering through a “fantasy” garden typical of the fairy tales that made the author famous.
Kengo Kuma summarised the methodology of the study, “we are interested in the process; the form is never at the beginning of a project, but appears at the end as a result of a long creative process”.
European and Japanese traditions
Jordi Viñals explained one of the projects of the Kengo Kuma & Associates studio in detail and how they have made the principles that guide their practice a reality. “The Albert Kahn museum project in Paris has allowed us to implement certain notions of traditional Japanese architecture in the capital of France,” he said. The museum is hosting the “Archives of the Planet” collection with around 72,000 colour photographs (autochromes) taken by the team of this early 20th century philanthropist. The project is located in the gardens of Albert Kahn, where he built a collage of gardens from different parts of the world, including a Japanese garden, the source of inspiration for architectural design.
For the extension and restoration of this museum and garden space, the studio used and reinterpreted traditional Japanese elements such as the engawa (intermediate space between the interior and the exterior that runs along the façade), the sudare (filters that increase the depth of the façade by sifting the light and allowing a glimpse certain views), or the importance of thresholds and access sequences typical of Japanese gardens.
Jordi Viñals stated that “Modernism, with its positivist vision and with the arrival of concrete, built larger and bigger buildings, always believing that in the end it would find a way to impose itself and control nature. The great earthquake in Japan of 2011 proved once again that this has not happened: nature always wins. In our study, we believe that part of the solution is to downscale, to develop a more resilient and self-sufficient architecture, flexible and capable of regenerating quickly after a disaster, as has traditionally been built in Japan.”
Construction and regeneration
Meanwhile, Lorenzo Chelleri reflected on the limits of the planet and ecosystems. “Beyond human perception, it has been shown with scientific data that we are pushing the planet beyond the point of no-return,” he said. “50 years ago, globalisation eliminated the relationship with the local. The 90s approach of trying to extract less from the earth hasn’t worked,” he explained.
Chelleri advocated “evolving from construction to the management of what has already been built,” as well as “thinking about how to realign city governance with nature.” “Can a city be regenerative, and therefore produce resources from construction? We should design cities and buildings so that the same construction process would be regenerative,” he concluded.
