Design and collaborations

Quarella & Kengo Kuma for Stone Grove

Kengo Kuma

Kengo Kuma (1954) decided he would devote his life to architecture at a very young age, after visiting the National Stadium for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in Yoyogi, designed by Kenzo Tange. He studied architecture at the University of Tokyo (receiving a Master’s degree in 1979) and founded Kengo Kuma Associates in 1990.

In his capacity as professor at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Tokyo, he founded the Kuma Lab for studies into new materials and led an advanced course on digital design and manufacture. His multi-award-winning studio aims to produce architecture that naturally blends with its surroundings, proposing a non-invasive, human-scale vision of design. The firm is constantly on the lookout for new materials to replace cement and steel, and searching for a new approach in a post-industrial society.

He founded Kengo Kuma Associates in 1990. He is currently a university professor and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, after having taught at Keio University and the University of Tokyo. KKAA projects are currently underway in more than 40 countries. Kengo Kuma proposes an architecture that forges new relations between nature, technology and human beings.

His main publications include Zen Shigoto (Kengo Kuma – The Complete Works, Daiwa Shobo), Ten Sen Men (“Point, Line, Plane”, Iwanami Shoten), Makeru Kenchiku (Architecture of Defeat, Iwanami Shoten), Shizen na Kenchiku (Natural Architecture, Iwanami Shinsho), Chii-sana Kenchiku (Small Architecture, Iwanami Shinsho) and many others.

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Stone Grove

‘Formally natural and spatially wild’, with this concise and immediate definition Kengo Kuma defines the Stone Grove project.