Steel, concrete and inflated egos are ruining cities. At least that’s what Japanese architect Kengo Kuma believes.
“Buildings need life. Concrete and steel buildings … we cannot feel life from them,” Kuma told Tatler when we visited his office in Tokyo’s affluent Aoyama district in October last year. His firm, Kengo Kuma & Associates, occupies multiple floors in a small commercial building, accessed by an old, rickety lift that holds five people at a time, at the most.
It’s a quaint setup for a visionary of Kuma’s calibre—he has completed more than 300 projects in 20 countries around the world, and was named the World’s Most Influential Architect by Time magazine in 2021—but his less-is-more approach is what has made him so prolific.
“Sometimes, design can
