Turning The Scales

Whether designing for a large project or small, architect Kengo Kuma focuses on the human scale. The Japanese maestro talks to Marianna Cerini about the tectonic shift he sees in the architecture of the future

- Marianna Cerini

Kengo Kuma believes blockbuster architecture has had its day. The Japanese architect, one of the most acclaimed of our time, is convinced that huge skyscrapers and looming concrete complexes will be things of the past within a few years. “We’re entering the era of personalised architecture,” he declares. “The shift is already happening. People have a yearning for softer, more human-focused shapes.” Such thoughts might sound idealistic, but they underpin the core of Kuma’s practice: a preoccupation with the individual.

The 63-year-old design guru is in Hong Kong to give a talk at Whitestone Gallery in H Queen’s, a gallery that specialises in Japanese art and whose interiors he designed. Tall and dressed head to toe in black, he looks intimidatingly stern when we meet. As he delves into the philosophy of his work, however, his whole demeanour brightens. “I think of buildings as human bodies,” he says. “They need to have a soul of sorts and work as natural environments.”

Kuma has been exploring this approach since he began studying the discipline at the University of Tokyo in 1979, although his fascination with buildings started much earlier, when he was 10. “It was 1964, the year of the summer Olympics in Tokyo,” he says. “My father took me to see architect Kenzo Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium, a masterpiece of Japanese modernism. I decided I wanted to become an architect then.”