KKAA Newsletter #34 (March 29, 2024) See in English 日本語で見る

#34 September 25, 2020


Two collections of work by KKAA have been published.

One of these collections entitled TOKYO KUMA KENGO published by Kadokawa consists of a new attempt to discuss the structure, history and culture of the complicated city of Tokyo through the work that KKAA has done in Tokyo. The act of designing architecture for a “particular location” resembles an attempt to write a passionate love letter to a woman. I wrote a somewhat romantic essay as the preface for this book. There are various “towns” in Tokyo, and I wrote this essay based on the desire to use women as a metaphor for the unique appearance and character of each respective town in Tokyo. I have continued to write love letters in the form of buildings in the same manner as one recalls a long lost love. I remembered the passion that I felt at each of these points in time. I think that the theory of architecture being a love letter to a particular location is the essence of the architecture of KKAA.

The other collection of work consists of the third volume that has been published by GA. The façade detail of the Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building that was selected by Yoshio Futagawa as the image for the cover of this book may symbolize the atmosphere of the time period that is covered by this collection of work.

Kengo Kuma © Onebeat Breakzenya

ProjectsSnowpeak Landstation HakubaWe created an outdoor recreation facility called “Snowpeak Landstation Hakuba” that integrates a store, restaurant, café and outdoor activities with the objective of stimulating economic development of Hakuba Village in Nagano Prefecture. The woods on the site have been provided with wooden trailer houses so that visitors can enjoy camping as well as glamping. The large roof was created to reflect the silhouette of the three peaks of Hakuba, and a wooden framework using small-diameter pieces of wood was designed based on an image of tree branches and snow crystals. The space is divided into sections using the same type of fabric that is used for tarps, and wooden louvers with the bark left on are lined up along the walls in order to create space that make it feels like you are on an “outdoor outing” even though you are inside. Read More
ProjectsJapan National StadiumThis large stadium was designed as a collection of small-diameter pieces of wood. The facade consists of overlapping, multi-layered eaves. The underside of each eave is covered with small-diameter wood louvers in an effort to express the tradition of beautiful eaves in Japanese architecture in an appropriate contemporary manner. Square cedar lumber measuring 105mm, the most common size in Japan, was split into three 50mm pieces, to create these louvers. The frequency and density of the louvers was varied in order to give a human-scale to the eave. The roof has a truss structure which combines steel beams and laminated lumber with a medium cross-section, utilizing the axial stiffness of wood to minimize deformation of the roof trusses due to wind or earthquakes. *not available for publication Read More
Projects1550 Alberni Street TowerThis is a high-rise condominium, located where Vancouver’s Coal Harbour District tapers north toward Stanley Park. We wanted to create a new kind of skyscraper not as an isolated object, but instead defined by strong relationships to its setting. We also wanted nature to be present throughout the ground floor. Here, an open-air moss-covered amphitheater invites people under a kigumi cloud for musical and theatrical performances, engaging the city with a natural place for cultural activity. The tower’s characteristic silhouette results from its response to the city and to the vast natural surroundings. Large, sweeping arcs carve the building volume according to view corridors of the adjacent buildings, toward the Harbour and the mountains beyond. These big scoops reveal the softer interiors of the building, yielding balconies throughout, and exposing the wood patterning beneath the eaves. Outdoor living is immediately accessible for each unit. Elsewhere, the harder vertical facades comprise units of glass, opaque aluminum and grille panels, reflecting and filtering the ever-changing Pacific Northwest light. It is a tall, distinctive presence on the skyline, but made of visibly smaller pieces. No two views of the building are the same, its shape elusive. Read More