Autumn at Harvard

I held the launch event for my new monograph, Kengo Kuma: New Works, published by Thames & Hudson, on Harvard’s campus this autumn. The idea came from Grace La, Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, who wrote the introduction. She suggested that instead of a formal lecture, we have a more intimate conversation.

I first met Grace when I gave a lecture at Harvard in the spring of 2025. She observed that, in my architecture, even the city itself is treated as a form of nature. She saw this as something unique, different from the Western tendency to see the city and nature as opposites. Her insight was fresh even to me. I felt that her Asian roots and Western education had given her this distinctive perspective. For that reason, I asked her to write the introduction to this new book from Thames & Hudson, instead of my longtime mentor at Columbia University, Kenneth Frampton.

Grace also suggested that we use an overhead projector for the event. It reminded me of a time, decades ago, before slides and PowerPoint became common. I was surprised that Harvard still kept such an antiquated piece of equipment.

What made the experience special was that our hands became part of the presentation. By pointing directly to details in the images, we could talk in a warm and intimate way. The overhead projector beautifully revealed a quality of my architecture: a sense of nature that can be felt even in the middle of a city. It became an unforgettable event.

After the conversation, there was some time before the reception, so I walked through Harvard’s autumn campus with Grace and several friends. During our walk, they invited me to visit a small library designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. I was surprised, as I had never known it existed.

The space was quietly hidden inside Lamont Library, yet it felt like one of Harvard’s treasures. There, visitors can listen through headphones to recordings of poets reading their own work and feel a direct connection to the poets themselves.

The room is called the Woodberry Poetry Room, named after George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930), a poet and scholar who graduated from Harvard. Woodberry believed that poetry should not be left solely to academic study. More importantly, it should be enjoyed as one of life’s pleasures. Harvard shared this vision and created the room in his honor. The university asked Alvar Aalto, already known for designing warm and welcoming spaces for books, to create it. The result was this small treasure.

After the unique experience of using an overhead projector, discovering this special place for poetry felt almost like a miracle. On that autumn evening at Harvard, I felt as if the campus was quietly showing me the direction architecture should take.